
Class 1 

Book 

GopyrightW 



CQESUGm DEPOSm 



The Group Mind 



The Group Mind 

A Sketch of the Principles of Collective 

Psychology with Some Attempt to Apply 

Them to the Interpretation of 

National Life and Character 



By 

William McDougall, F.R.S. 

Late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, Fellow of Corpus 

Christi College, and Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy 

in the University of Oxford 



" Une nation est une &me, un principe spirituel. Deux choses qui, k vrai 
dire, n'en font qu'une constituent cette dme, ce principe spirituel. L'une 
est dans le passe, Tautre dans le present. L'une est la possession en 
commun d'un riche legs de souvenirs; I'autre est le consentement actuel, 
le desir de vivre ensemble, la volonte de continuer k faire valoir I'heritage 
qu'on a regu indivis." 

Ernest Renan. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

^be fcniclier&ocfiet ipreaa 

1920 






Copyright, 1920 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



AUG '2 !920 



y^ 




©CI.A570915 



TO 
Professor L. T. HOShOUSE 

in admiration of his work in philosophy, psychology, 

and sociology, and in the hope that he may discern 

in this book some traces of the spirit by which his 

own writings have been inspired. 



Preface to tHe -A.i:nerican Edition. 

TO the American edition of this book I add these few 
words of thanks to the American readers of my 
previous writings; their appreciation has en- 
couraged me to persevere in the plan of writing a Treatise 
on Social Psychology, of which plan the present volume 
represents the second step. In America the public inter- 
est in psychology and sociology is much more widespread 
than in these islands, a fact sufficiently attested by the 
existence of chairs in these subjects in all the leading uni- 
versities, and the lack of such chairs in all but two or three 
of the universities in this country. By those English- 
men who believe that the study of these sciences is a 
matter of urgent national importance this state of affairs 
is deplored, and they desire and even hope that in this 
matter the example of America may soon be followed here. 
Meanwhile I send this book across the water, in the hope 
that it may contribute its mite towards the working-out 
of the great experiment in Social Science which the Amer- 
ican people is making with so ardent faith in the power of 
the Group Mind to attain to effective direction of its own 
development. 

W. MacDougall. 

Oxford, 1919. 



VII 



Preface 

IN this book I have sketched the principles of the mental 
life of groups, and have made a rough attempt to 
apply these principles to the understanding of the life 
of nations. I have had the substance of the book in the 
form of lecture notes for some years, but have long hesi- 
tated to publish it. I have been held back, partly by my 
sense of the magnitude and difficulty of the subject, and 
the inadequacy of my own preparation for dealing with 
it, partly because I wished to build upon a firm foundation 
of generally accepted principles of human nature. 

Some fifteen years ago I projected a complete treatise 
on Social Psychology which would have comprised the 
substance of the present volume. I was prevented from 
carrying out the ambitious scheme, partly by the difficulty 
of finding a publisher, partly by my increasing sense of the 
lack of any generally accepted or acceptable account of 
the constitution of human nature. I found it necessary 
to attempt to provide such a foundation, and in 1908 pub- 
lished my Introduction to Social Psychology. That book 
has enjoyed a certain popular success. But it was more 
novel, more revolutionary, than I had supposed when 
writing it ; and my hope that it would rapidly be accepted 
by my colleagues as, in the main, a true account of the 
fundamentals of human nature has not been realised. 

All this part of psychology labours under the great 
difficulty that the worker in it cannot, like other men of 
science, publish his conclusions as discoveries which will 



X Preface 

necessarily be accepted by any persons competent to 
judge. He can only state his conclusions and his reason- 
ing and hope that they may gradually gain the general 
approval of his colleagues. For to the obscure questions 
of fact with which he deals, it is in the nature of things 
impossible to return answers supported by indisputable 
experimental proofs. In this field the evidence of an 
author's approximation towards truth can consist only 
in his success in gradually persuading competent opinion 
of the value of his views. My sketch of the fundamentals 
of human nature can hardly claim even that degree of 
success which would be constituted by an active criticism 
and discussion of it in competent quarters. Yet there are 
not wanting indications that opinion is turning slowly 
towards the acceptance of some such doctrine as I then 
outlined. Especially the development of psycho-patho- 
logy, stimulated so greatly by the esoteric dogmas of the 
Freudian school, points in this direction. The only test 
and verification to which any scheme of human nature can 
be submitted is the application of it to practice in the 
elucidation of the concrete phenomena of human life, and 
in the control and direction of conduct, especially in the 
two great fields of medicine and education. And I have 
been much encouraged by finding that some workers in 
both of these fields have found my scheme of use in their 
practice, and have even, in some few cases, given it a cordial 
general approval. But group psychology is itself one of 
the fields in which such testing and verification must be 
sought. And I have decided to delay no longer in at- 
tempting to bring my scheme to this test. I am also 
impelled to venture on what may appear to be premature 
pubHcation by the fact that five of the best years of my 
life have been wholly given up to military service and the 
practical problems of psycho-therapy, and by the reflection 
that the years of a man's life are numbered and that, even 



Preface xi 

though I should delay yet another fifteen years, I might 
find that I had made but little progress towards securing 
the firm foundation I desired. 

It may seem to some minds astonishing that I should 
now admit that the substance of this book was committed 
to writing before the Great War; for that war is supposed 
by some to have revolutionised all our ideas of human 
nature and of national life. But the war has given me 
little reason to add to or to change what I had written. 
This may be either because I am too old to learn, or be- 
cause what I had written was in the main true ; and I am 
naturally disposed to accept the second explanation. 

I wish to make it clear to any would-be reader of this 
volume that it is a sequel to my Introduction to Social 
Psychology, that it builds upon that book and assumes that 
the reader is acquainted with it. That former volume 
has been criticised as an attempted outline of Social 
Psychology. One critic remarks that it may be good 
psychology, but it is very little social; another wittily 
says, *'Mr. McDougall, while giving a full account of the 
genesis of instincts that act in society, hardly shows how 
they issue into society. He seems to do a great deal of 
packing in preparation for a journey on which he never 
starts." The last sentence exactly describes the book. 
I found myself, like so many of my predecessors and con- 
temporaries, about to start on a voyage of exploration of 
societies with an empty trunk, or at least with one very 
inadequately supplied with the things essential for success- 
ful travelling. I decided to avoid the usual practice of 
starting without impedimenta, and of picking up or invent- 
ing bits of make-shift equipment as each emergency arose ; 
I would pack my trunk carefully before starting. And 
now, although my fellow-travellers have not entirely 
approved my outfit, I have launched out to put it to the 
test ; and I cannot hope that my readers will follow me if 



xii Preface 

they have not at their command a similar outfit — namely, 
a similar view of the constitution of human nature. 

I would gratefully confess that the resolve to go forward 
without a further long period of preparation has been made 
possible for me largely by the encouragement I have had 
from the recently published work of Dr. James Drever, 
Instinct in Man. For the author of that work has care- 
fully studied the most fundamental part of my Social 
Psychology, in the light of his wide knowledge of the 
cognate literature, and has found it to be in the main 
acceptable. 

The title and much of the substance of the present 
volume might lead a hasty reader to suppose that I am 
influenced by, or even in sympathy with, the political 
philosophy associated with German ' * idealism. ' ' I would, 
therefore, take this opportunity both to prevent any such 
erroneous inference, and to indicate my attitude towards 
that system of thought in plainer language than it seemed 
possible to use before the war. I have argued that we 
may properly speak of a group mind, and that each of the 
most developed nations of the present time may be re- 
garded as in process of developing a group mind. This 
must lay me open to the suspicion of favouring the po- 
litical philosophy which makes of the state a super-individ- 
ual and semi-divine person before whom all men must 
bow down, renouncing their claims to freedom of judgment 
and action; the political philosophy in short of German 
''idealism," which derives in the main from Hegel, which 
has been so ably represented in this country by Dr. 
Bosanquet, which has exerted so great an influence at 
Oxford, and which in my opinion is as detrimental to 
honest and clear thinking as it has proved to be destruc- 
tive of political morality in its native country. I am 
relieved of the necessity of attempting to justify these 
severe strictures by the recent publication of The Meta- 



Preface xiii 

physical Theory of the State by Prof. L. T. Hobhouse. In 
that volume Professor Hobhouse has subjected the politi- 
cal philosophy of German "idealism," and especially Dr. 
Bosanquet's presentation of it, to a criticism which, as it 
seems to me, should suffice to expose the hollo wness of its 
claims to all men for all time ; and I cannot better define 
my own attitude towards it than by expressing the com- 
pleteness of my sympathy with the searching criticism of 
Mr. Hobhouse's essay. In my youth I was misled into 
supposing that the Germans were the possessors of a pecul- 
iar wisdom; and I have spent a large part of my life in 
discovering, in one field of science after another, that I 
was mistaken. I can always read the works of some Ger- 
man philosophers, especially those of Hermann Lotze, 
with admiration and profit ; but I have no longer any de- 
sire to contend with the great systems of ''idealism," and 
I think it a cruel waste that the best years of the lives of 
many young men should be spent struggling with the 
obscure phrases in which Kant sought to express his pro- 
found and subtle thought. My first scientific effort was 
to find evidence in support of a new hypothesis of muscu- 
lar contraction ; and, in working through the various Ger- 
man theories, I was dismayed by their lack of clear 
mechanical conceptions. My next venture was in the 
physiology of vision, a branch of science which had become 
almost exclusively German. Starting with a prepossession 
in favour of one of the dominant German theories, I soon 
reached the conclusion that the two German leaders in 
this field, Helmholtz and Hering, with their hosts of dis- 
ciples, had, in spite of much admirable detailed work, 
added little of value and much confusion to the theory of 
vision left us by a great Englishman, — namely, Thomas 
Young; and in a long series of papers I endeavoured to 
restate and supplement Young's theory. Advancing into 
the field of physiological psychology, I attacked the pen- 



xiv Preface 

derous volumes of Wundt with enthusiasm; only to find 
that his physiology of the nervous system was a tissue of 
unacceptable hypotheses and that he failed to connect it in 
any profitable manner with his questionable psychology. 
And, finding even less satisfaction in such works as Zie- 
hen's Physiologische Psychologie, with its crude materialism 
and associationism, or in the dogmatic speculations of Ver- 
worn, I published my own small attempt to bring psy- 
chology into fruitful relations with the physiology of the 
nervous system. This brought me up against the great 
problem of the relations between mind and body; and, 
having found that, in this sphere, German "idealism" was 
pragmatically indistinguishable from thorough-going ma- 
terialism, and that those Germans who claimed to recon- 
cile the two did not really rise much above the level of 
Ernst Haeckel's wild flounderings, I published my History 
and Defense of A nimism. And in this field, though I found 
much to admire in the writings of Lotze, I derived most 
encouragement and stimulus from Professor Bergson. In 
working at the foundations of human nature, I found little 
help in German psychology, and more in French books, i 
especially in those of Professor Ribot. In psycho-patho- 1 
logy I seemed to find that the claims of the German and 
Austrian schools were far outweighed by those of the 
French writers, especially of Professor Janet. So now, in - 
attacking the problems of the mental life of societies, I | 
have found little help from German psychology or soci- 
ology, from the elaborations of Wundt 's Volkerpsychologie 
or the ponderosities of Schaeffle, and still less from the 
*' idealist" philosophy of politics. In this field also it is 
French authors from whom I have learnt most, and with 
whom I find myself most in sympathy, especially MM. 
Fouillee, Boutmy, Tarde, and Demolins; though I would 
not be thought to hold in low esteem the works of many 
English and American authors, notably those of Buckle, 



I 



Preface xv 

Bagehot, Maine, Lecky, Lowell, and of many others, to 
some of which I have made reference in the chapters of 
this book. 

I have striven to make this a strictly scientific work, 
rather than a philosophical one ; that is to say, I have tried 
to ascertain and state the facts and principles of social life 
as it is and has been, without expressing my opinion as to 
what it should be. But, in order further to guard myself 
against the implications attached by German *' idealism" 
to the notion of a collective mind, I wish to state that 
politically my sympathies are with individualism and 
internationalism, although I have, I think, fully recognised 
the great and necessary part played in human life by the 
Group Spirit, and by that special form of it which we now 
call ** Nationalism." 

I know well that those of my readers whose sympathies 
are with Collectivism, Syndicalism, or Socialism in any of its 
various forms will detect in this book the cloven foot of 
individualism, and leanings towards the aristocratic prin- 
ciple. I know also that many others will reproach me 
with giving countenance to communistic and ultra- 
democratic tendencies. I would, therefore, point out 
explicitly at the outset that, if this book affords justifica- 
tion for any normative doctrine or ideal, it is for one which 
would aim at a synthesis of the principles of individualism 
and communism, of aristocracy and democracy, of self- 
realisation and of service to the community. I can best 
express this ideal in the wise words of Mr. F. H. Bradley, 
which I extract from his famous essay on ' ' My Station and 
its Duties." "The individual's consciousness of himself 
is inseparable from the knowing himself as an organ of the 
whole; ... for his nature now is not distinct from his 
* artificial self.' He is related to the living moral system 
not as to a foreign body ; his relation to it is ' too inward 
even for faith,' since faith implies a certain separation. 



xvi Preface 

It is no other- world that he cannot see but must trust to; 
he feels himself in it, and it in him ; . . . the belief in this 
real moral organism is the one solution of ethical problems. 
It breaks down the antithesis of despotism and individual- 
ism; it denies them, while it preserves the truth of both. 
The truth of individualism is saved, because, unless we 
have intense life and self -consciousness in the members of 
the state, the whole state is ossified. The truth of despot- 
ism is saved, because, unless the member realises the whole 
by and in himself, he fails to reach his own individuahty. 
Considered in the main, the best communities are those 
which have the best men for their members, and the best 
men are the members of the best communities. . . . 
The two problems of the best man and best state are two 
sides, two distinguishable aspects of the one problem, how 
to realise in human nature the perfect unity of homogen- 
eity and specification ; and when we see that each of these 
without the other is unreal, then we see that (speaking in 
general) the welfare of the state and the welfare of its 
individuals are questions which it is mistaken and ruinous 
to separate. Personal morality and political and social 
institutions cannot exist apart, and (in general) the better 
the one, the better the other. The community is moral, 
because it realises personal moraUty ; personal morality is 
moral, because and in so far as it realises the moral whole." 
Since correcting the proofs of this volume, I have become 
acquainted with two recent books whose teaching is so 
closely in harmony with my own that I wish to direct my 
readers' attention to them. One is Sir Martin Conway's 
The Crowd in Peace and War, which contains many valu- 
able illustrations of group life. The other is Miss M. P. 
FoUett's The New State; Group Organization the Solution 
oj Popular Government, which expounds the principles and 
advantages of collective deHberation with vigour and 
insight. 



Preface xvii 

I am under much obligation to Prof. G. Dawes Hicks. 
He has read the proofs of my book, and has helped me 
greatly with many suggestions; but he has, of course, no 
responsibility for the views expressed in it. 

W. McD. 
Oxford, March, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter I. Introduction. The Province of Col- 
lective Psychology 

The need for a more concrete psychology — the conception of 
the group mind — objections to the conception examined — the 
conception not a new one but familiar in political philosophy 
and law — the essential problem ...... i 

PART 1. GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE 
PSYCHOLOGY 

Chapter II. The Mental Life of the Crowd 

The crowd presents the phenomena of collective life in crude 
and simple forms — the formation of the psychological crowd — 
its peculiarities — spread and intensification of emotions — how 
that takes place — the notion of "collective consciousness" 
provisionally rejected — the submergence of personality in the 
crowd — the low intelhgence of crowds — suggestibility — lack 
of individual responsibility . . . . . .31 

Chapter III. The Highly Organised Group 

The principal conditions of organisation — the army as the 
type — how its organisation raises the soldier to a higher plane 
of collective life — the nature of collective will illustrated — 
influence of leaders ........ 67 

Chapter IV. The Group Spirit 

The self-consciousness of the group — the group idea and the 
group sentiment — the group consciousness in primitive life — 
views of Cornford and Levy Bruhl examined — "collective 
representations" — the peculiar merit of the group spirit — mul- 
tiple group consciousness — the hierarchy of groups — inter- 
action of groups ........ 87 

xix 



XX Contents 

PAGE 

Chapter V. Peculiarities of Groups of Various 
Types 

Rudimentary groups — natural and artificial groups — ^pur- 
posive, traditional, and mixed groups . . . .122 

PART 11. THE NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER 
Chapter VI. Introductory. What is a Nation? 

Difficulty of defining nationhood — Prof. Ramsay Muir's 
definition not adequate — mental organisation, resting on 
tradition, the most essential condition — lack of clear con- 
ceptions has given currency to many obscure notions — the 
study of nationhood essentially the work of group psychology 135 

Chapter VII. The Mind of a Nation 

National character defined — conditions essential to its forma- 
tion — homogeneity a prime condition — the influence of 
racial qualities on national character — the durability of racial 
qualities — acquired mental homogeneity as illustrated by the 
American nation — the influence upon it of geographical con- 
ditions .......... 148 

Chapter VIII. Freedom of Communication as a 
Condition of National Life 

Large nations impossible in the ancient world — the tendency 
of nations to grow larger with increase of means of communi- 
cation .......... 181 

Chapter IX. The Part of Leaders in National Life 

Nations owe their existence to influence of leaders — men of 
genius — men of talent — their role in national life .186 

Chapter X. Other Conditions of National Life 

A common purpose — war the unifier — national responsi- 
bilities — continuity of national life — organisation of the 
national mind analogous to that of the individual mind — 
national self-consciousness — types of organisation . . . 195 



Contents xxi 

PAGE 

Chapter XI. The Will of the Nation 

Rousseau's doctrine of the general will — Prof. Bosanquet's 
view inadequate — the national mind has both organic unity 
and the unity of self-consciousness — increase of national self- 
consciousness the leading fact of recent world history — self- 
consciousness of nations developed by rivalry and intercourse 
between them . . . . . . . . 212 

Chapter XII. Ideas in National Life 

The idea of the nation is constitutive — ideas work as forces in 
national life only in virtue of sentiments grown up about their 
objects — the notions of society as an organism and as founded 
on contract synthesised in the conception of the nation as 
a contractual organism — the value of nationality examined — 
ideas of conquest — of ancestor worship — of liberty and 
equality — of progress — of solidarity ..... 232 

Chapter XIII. Nations of the Higher Type 

National deliberation — the influence on it of organisation 
and of traditions — certain advantages of the representative 
system — public opinion arises from an informal organisation — 
the problem of the high level of public opinion — its solution 
to be found in the influence of leaders . . . . . 256 



PART III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL 
MIND AND CHARACTER 

Chapter XIV. Introductory. Factors of National 
Development 

Civilisation does not imply improvement of racial qualities — 
it abolishes selection by the physical environment — it consists 
in improved intellectual and moral traditions and is dependent 
on favourable social organisation . . . . -275 

Chapter XV. The Race-Making Period 

Dififerentiation of races from a common stock — human evolu- 
tion differs from that of the animals in becoming group 
evolution — physical environment supplanted by social en- 
vironment and organisation — the direct effects of climate 
on the body — on the mind ...... 286 



xxii Contents 



Chapter XVI. The Race-Making Period (continued) 



FAGS 



Physical environment determines racial adaptation directly 
by selection — indirectly by determining occupations and 
social organisation — the protective spirit in France — the 
spirit of independence in England — attempts of Buckle, 
Boutmy, and Sir H. Maine to account for these not successful 302 

Chapter XVII. The Race-Making Period (continued) 

The influence of occupations — the leading principle of the 
school of Le Play — the development of the spirit of protection 
in the people of Gaul — the development of the spirit of inde- 
pendence in the ancestors of the Enghsh — the crossing of 
races — its bad and its good results . .319 

Chapter XVIII. Racial Changes during the His- 
toric Period 

Race substitution — the population of Greece — internal selec- 
tion — its effects in Spain — various forms of social selection — 
mostly negative or injurious to national stock — economic selec- 
tion and the social ladder — the innate moral disposition — the 
question of its improvement ...... 337 

Chapter XIX. The Progress of Nations in their 
Youth 

The rarity of progress — the conditions enabling progress — 
group selection — in what has progress consisted? — views of 
Buckle and Kidd — conquest and domination an early con- 
dition of progress — variabihty of crossed races — influence 
of physical environment — western civiHsation and social 
organisation ......... 370 

Chapter XX. The Progress of Nations in their 
Maturity 

Liberty and social organisation — caste makes for rigidity — 
the growth of toleration — imaginative sympathy increases 
with increasing freedom of intercourse, bringing strife and 
understanding — the group spirit as the main agent of further 
progress 393 

Index 415 



The Group Mind 



TKe Group Mind 



CHAPTER I 
Introduction 

TKe Province of Collective PsycKology 

TO define exactly the relations of the several special 
sciences is a task which can never be completely 
achieved so long as these sciences continue to grow 
and change. It is a peculiarly difficult task in respect of 
the biological sciences, because we have not yet reached 
general agreement as to the fundamental conceptions 
which these sciences should employ. To illustrate this 
difficulty I need only refer to a recent symposium of the. 
Aristotelian Society in which a number of distinguished 
philosophers and biologists discussed the question ''Are 
physical, biological, and psychological categories irre- 
ducible?" The discussion revealed extreme differences 
of opinion, and failed to bring the disputants nearer to a 
common view. The difficulty is still greater in respect of 
human sciences — anthropology, psychology, ethics, poli- 
tics, economics, sociology, and the rest ; and it is not to be 
hoped that any general agreement on this difficult ques- 
tion will be reached in the near future. Yet it seems 
worth while that each writer who aspires to break new 



2 Introduction 

ground in any part of this field of inquiry should en- 
deavour to make clear to himself and others his conception 
of the relations of that part to the rest of the field. It is, 
then, in no dogmatic spirit, or with any belief in the final- 
ity of the position assigned to my topic, that I venture the 
following definition of the province of psychology with 
which this book is concerned. 

I have chosen the title, ''The Group Mind," after some 
hesitation in favour of the alternative, "Collective Psy- 
chology." The latter has the advantage that it has 
already been used by several continental authors, more 
especially French and Italian psychologists. But the 
title I have chosen is, I think, more distinctively English 
in quality and denotes more clearly the topic that I desire 
to discuss. 

An alternative and not inappropriate title would have 
been "An Outline of Social Psychology"; but two reasons 
prevented the adoption of this. First, my Introduction 
to Social Psychology has become generally known by the 
abbreviated title Social Psychology. This was an unfore- 
seen result and unfortunate designation; for, as I have 
explained in the Preface to the present volume, that other 
work was designed merely as a propedeutic; it aimed 
merely at clearing the ground and laying the foundations 
for Social Psychology, while leaving the topic itself for 
subsequent treatment. Secondly, I conceive Group 
Psychology to be a part only, though a very large part, 
of the total field of Social Psychology; for, while the former 
has to deal only with the life of groups, the latter has also 
to describe and account for the influence of the group on 
the growth and activities of the individual. This is the 
most concrete part of psychology and naturally comes last 
in the order of development of the science; for, like other 
sciences, psychology began with the most abstract no- 
tions, the forms of activity of mind in general, and, by 



I 



Introduction 3 

the aid of the abstract conceptions achieved by the earlier 
workers, progresses to the consideration of more concrete 
problems, the problems presented by actual living persons 
in all their inexhaustible richness and complexity. 

Until the later decades of the nineteenth century, psy- 
chology continued to concern itself almost exclusively 
with the mind of man conceived in an abstract fashion, 
not as the mind of any particular individual, but as the 
mind of a representative individual considered in abstrac- 
tion from his social 'settings as something given to our 
contemplation fully formed and complete. 

Two important changes of modern thought have shown 
the necessity of a more concrete treatment of psychologi- 
cal problems. The first has been the coming into promi- 
nence of the problems of genesis which, although not 
originated by Darwin, received so great an impetus from 
his work. The second has been the increasing realisation 
of the need for a more synthetic treatment of all fields of 
science, the realisation that analysis alone carries us ever 
farther away from concrete problems and leads only to a 
system of abstract conceptions which are very remote 
from reality, however useful they may prove in the physi- 
cal sciences. The biological and the human sciences 
especially have been profoundly affected by these two 
changes of modern thought. As Theodore Merz has so 
well shown in the fourth volume of his monumental 
work,' the need has been increasingly felt of the vue 
d' ensemble, of the synthetic mode of regarding organisms, 
men, and institutions, not as single things, self-contained 
and complete in themselves, but as merely nodes or meet- 
ing points of all the forces of the world acting and reacting 
in unlimited time and space. 

Psychology was, then, until recent years the science of 
the abstract individual mind. Each worker aimed at 

* History of European Thought in the 19th Century. 



Introduction 



iionl 

enti 

I tnl 



rendering by the aid of introspection an analytic descript 
of the stream of his own consciousness, a consistent 
classification of the elements or features that he seemed to 
discover therein, and some general laws or rules of the 
order of succession and conjunction of these features; 
postulating in addition some one or more explanatory 
principles or active agencies such as ''the will" or the 
desire of pleasure, the aversion from pain, or "the asso- 
ciation of ideas," to enable him to account for the flow of 
the distinguishable elements of consciousness. The psy- 
chology achieved by these studies, necessary and valuable 
as they were, was of little help to men who were struggling 
with the concrete problems of human life and was there- 
fore largely ignored by them. But, as I have pointed 
out in the Introduction to my Social Psychology, those 
who approached these problems were generally stimu- 
lated to do so by their interest in questions of right 
and wrong, in questions of norms and standards of con- 
duct, the urgency of which demanded immediate an- 
swers for the practical guidance of human life in all its 
spheres of activity, for the shaping of laws, institutions, 
governments, and associations of every kind; or, as 
frequently perhaps, for the justification and defence of 
standards of conduct, modes of belief, and forms of in- 
stitution, which men had learnt to esteem as supremely 
good. 

Thus the political science of Hobbes was the expression 
of his attempt to justify the monarchy established by the 
Tudors and endangered by the failings of the Stuart 
kings ; while that of Locke was equally the outcome of his 
desire to justify the revolution of 1688. Hobbes felt it 
worth while to preface his magnum opus on political philo- 
sophy with a fanciful sketch of human nature and of 
primitive society; yet, as Mr. Gooch remarks, ''neither 
Hobbes nor his contemporaries knew anything of the 



Introduction 5 

actual life of primitive communities."' And it may be 
added that they knew as little of the foundations of human 
nature. Again, the social doctrines of Rousseau, with all 
their false psychology, were formulated in order to stir 
men to revolt against the conditions of social life then pre- 
valent in Europe. In a similar way, in the development 
of all that body of social doctrine that went under the 
name of Utilitarianism and which culminated in the politi- 
cal science and economy of the Manchester School, every 
step was prompted by the desire to find theoretical guid- 
ance or justification for rules governing human activity. 
And, if we go back to the Politics of Aristotle, we find the 
normative or regulative aim still more prominent. 

Thus, in all the human sciences, we see that the search 
for what is has been inextricably confused with and ham- 
pered by the effort to show what ought to be; and the 
further back we go in their history, the more does the 
normative point of view predominate. They all begin in 
the effort to describe what ought to be; and incidentally 
give some more or less fallacious or fantastic account of 
what is, merely in order to support the normative doctrines. 
And, as we trace their history forward towards the present 
time, we find the positive element coming more and more 
to the front, until it tends to preponderate over and even 
completely to supplant the normative aim. Thus even in 
Ethics there is now perceptible in some quarters a ten- 
dency to repudiate the normative standpoint. All the 
social sciences have, then, begun their work at what, from 
the strictly logical point of view, was the wrong end ; instead 
of first securing a basis of positive science and then build- 
ing up the normative doctrines upon that basis, they have 
advanced by repeatedly going backwards towards what 
should have been their foundations. Now the most 

* Political Thought in England from Bacon to Halifax, Home University 
Library, p. 49. 



6 Introduction 

important part of the positive basis of the social sciences 
is psychology; we find accordingly the social sciences at 
first ignoring psychology and then gradually working back 
to it; they became gradually more psychological and, in 
proportion as they did so, they became more valuable. 
Modern writers on these topics fall into two classes ; those 
who have attempted to work upon a psychological founda- 
tion, and those who have ignored or denied the need of any 
such basis. The earlier efforts of the former kind, among 
which we may reckon those of Adam Smith, Bentham, and 
the Mills, although they greatly influenced legislation and 
practice in general, have nevertheless brought the psy- 
chological method into some disrepute, because they 
reasoned from psychological principles which were unduly 
simplified and in fact misleading, notably the famous 
principle of psychological hedonism on which they so 
greatly relied. Their psychology was, in brief, too ab- 
stract; it had not achieved the necessary concreteness, 
which only the introduction of the genetic standpoint and 
the vue d'ensemble could give it. Other writers on the 
social sciences were content to ignore the achievements of 
psychology; but, since they dealt with the activities of 
human beings and the products of those activities, such as 
laws, institutions and customs, they could hardly avoid 
all reference to the human mind and its processes; they 
then relied upon the crude unanalysed psychological 
conceptions of popular speech ; often they went further and 
aspiring to explain the phenomena they described, made 
vast assumptions about the constitution and working of 
the human mind. Thus, for example, Renan, when he 
sought to explain some feature of the history of a nation or 
society, was in the habit, like many others, of ascribing it 
to some peculiar instinct which he postulated for this 
particular purpose, such as a political or a religious instinct 
or an instinct of subordination or of organisation. Comte 



Introduction 7 

made egoism and altruism the two master forces of the 
mind. Sir Henry Maine asserted that "satisfaction and 
impatience are the two great sources of poHtical conduct,'* 
and, after asserting that "no force acting on mankind has 
been less carefully examined than Party, and yet none 
better deserves examination," he was content to conclude 
that "Party is probably nothing more than a survival and 
a consequence of the primitive combativeness of man- 
kind."' More recently Prof. Giddings has discovered the 
principal force underlying all human associations in Con- 
sciousness of Kind. Butler and the intuitive moralists 
postulated "conscience" or moral sense as something 
innately present in the souls of men ; while the creators of 
the classical school of political economy were for the most 
part content to assume that man is a purely rational being 
who always intelligently pursues his own best interest, a 
false premise from which they deduced some conclusions 
that have not withstood the test of time. Similar vague 
assumptions may be found in almost every work on the 
social sciences — all illustrating the need for a psychology 
more concrete than the older individual psychology, as 
a basis for these sciences, a positive science, not of some 
hypothetical Robinson Crusoe, but of the mental life of 
men as it actually unfolds itself in the families, tribes, na- 
tions, societies of all sorts, that make up the human world. 
The general growth of interest in genetic problems, 
stimulated so greatly by the work of Darwin, turned the 
attention of psychologists to the problem of the genesis of 
the developed human mind — the problem of its evolution 
in the race and its development in the individual. Then it 
at once became apparent that both these processes are 
essentially social ; that they involve, and at every step are 
determined by, interactions between the individual and 

^ Essay on " The Nature of Democracy" in Popular Government, London, 
1885. 



8 Introduction 



I 



his social environment; that, while the growth of the in- 
dividual mind is moulded by the mental forces of the 
society in which it grows up, those forces are in turn 
the products of the interplay of the minds composing the 
society ; that, therefore, we can only understand the life of 
individuals and the life of societies, if we consider them 
always in relation to one another. It was realised that 
each man is an individual only in an imcomplete sense; 
that he is but a unit in a vast system of vital and spiritual 
forces which, expressing themselves in the form of human 
societies, are working towards ends which no man can fore- 
see; a unit whose chief function it is to transmit these forces 
unimpaired, which can change or add to them only in 
infinitesimal degree, and which, therefore, has but little 
significance and cannot be accounted for when considered 
in abstraction from that system. It became clear that the 
play of this system of forces at any moment of history is 
predominantly determined by conditions which are them- 
selves the products of an immensely long course of evolu- 
tion, conditions which have been produced by the mental 
activities of countless generations and which are but very 
little modified by the members of society living at any one 
time; so that, as has been said, society consists of the dead 
as well as of the living, and the part of the living in deter- 
mining its life is but insignificant as compared with the 
part of the dead. 

Any psychology that recognises these facts and attempts 
to display the reciprocal influences of the individual and 
the society in which he plays his part may be called Social 
Psychology. Collective or Group Psychology is, then, a 
part of this larger field. It has to study the mental life 
of societies of all kinds; and such understanding of the 
group life as it can achieve has then to be used by Social 
Psychology in rendering more concrete and complete our 
understanding of the individual life. 



Introduction 9 

Group Psychology itself consists properly of two parts, 
that which is concerned to discover the most general prin- 
ciples of group life, and that which applies these principles 
to the study of particular kinds and examples of group life. 
The former is logically prior to the second; though in 
practice it is hardly possible to keep them wholly apart. 
The present volume is concerned chiefly with the former 
branch. Only when the general principles of group life 
have been applied to the understanding of particular 
societies, of nations and the manifold system of groups 
within the nation, will it be possible for Social Psychology 
to return upon the individual life and give of it an ade- 
quate account in all its concrete fulness. 

The nature of Group Psychology may be illustrated by 
reference to Herbert Spencer's conception of sociology. 
Spencer pointed out that, if you set out to build a stable 
pile of solid bodies of a certain shape, the kind of structure 
resulting is determined by the shapes and properties of 
these units, that for example, if the units are spheres, there 
are only very few stable forms which the pile can assume. 
The same is true, he said, of such physical processes as 
crystallisation; the form and properties of the whole or 
aggregate are determined by the properties of the units. 
He maintained with less plausibility that the same holds 
good of animal and vegetable forms and of the elements of 
which they are composed. And he went on to argue that, 
in like manner, the structure and properties of a society 
are determined by the properties of the units, the individ- 
ual human beings, of which it is composed. 

This last proposition is true in a very partial sense only. 
For the aggregate which is a society has, in virtue of its 
past history, positive qualities which it does not derive 
from the units which compose it at any one time; and in 
virtue of these qualities it acts upon its units in a manner 
very different from that in which the units as such interact 



10 Introduction 

with one another. Further, each unit, when it becomes a 
member of a group, displays properties or modes of reac- 
tion which it does not display, which remain latent or 
potential only, so long as it remains outside that group. 
It is possible, therefore, to discover these potentialities of 
the units only by studying them as elements in the life of 
the whole. That is to say, the aggregate which is a 
society has a certain individuality, is a true whole which in 
great measure determines the nature and the modes of 
activity of its parts; it is an organic whole. The society 
has a mental life which is not the mere simi of the mental 
lives of its units existing as independent units; and a 
complete knowledge of the units, if and in so far as they 
could be known as isolated units, would not enable us to 
deduce the nature of the life of the whole, in the way that 
is implied by Spencer's analogies. 

Since, then, the social aggregate has a collective mental 
life, which is not merely the sum of the mental lives of its 
imits, it may be contended that a society not only enjoys 
a collective mental life but also has a collective mind or, 
as some prefer to say, a collective soul. 

The tasks of Group Psychology are, then, to examine the 
conception of the collective or group mind, in order to 
determine whether and in what sense this is a valid con- 
ception; to display the general principles of collective 
mental life which are incapable of being deduced from the 
laws of the mental life of isolated individuals; to distin- 
guish the principal types of collective mental life or group 
mind; to describe the peculiarities of those types and as 
far as possible to account for them. More shortly, Group 
Psychology has, first, to establish the general principles of 
group life (this is general collective psychology) ; secondly, 
it has to apply these principles in the endeavour to under- 
stand particular examples of group life. Group Psycho- 
logy, thus conceived, meets at the outset a difficulty which 



Introduction II 

stands in the way of every attempt of psychology to leave 
the narrow field of highly abstract individual psychology. 
It finds the ground already staked out and occupied by the 
representatives of another science, who are inclined to 
resent its intrusion as an encroachment on their rights. 
The science which claims to have occupied the field of 
Group Psychology is Sociology; and it is of some impor- 
tance that the claims of these sciences should be reconciled, 
so that they may live and work harmoniously together. 
I have no desire to claim for Group Psychology the whole 
province of Sociology. As I conceive it, that province is 
much wider than that of Group Psychology. Sociology 
is essentially a science which has to take a comprehensive 
and synthetic view of the life of mankind, and has to 
accept and make use of the conclusions of many other 
more special sciences of which psychology, and especially 
Group Psychology, is for it perhaps the most important. 
But other special sciences have very important if less 
intimate contributions to make to it. Thus, if it be true 
that great civilisations have decayed owing to changes of 
climate of their habitats, or owing to the introduction of 
such diseases as malaria into them, then Climatology and 
Epidemiology have their contributions to make to Socio- 
logy. If peculiarities of diet or the crossing of racial 
stocks may profoundly affect the vigour of peoples, 
Physiology must have its say. General Biology and the 
science of Genetics are bringing to light much that must 
be incorporated in Sociology. Economics, although need- 
ing to be treated far more psychologically than it com- 
monly has been, has its special contribution to make. 
These are only a few illustrations of the fact that the field 
of Sociology is very much wider and more general than 
that of Group Psychology, however important to it the 
conclusions of the narrower science may be. 

In this book it will be maintained that the conception of 



12 Introduction 

a group mind is useful and therefore valid; and, since this 
notion has already excited some opposition and criticism 
and is one that requires very careful definition, some 
attempt to define and justify it may usefully be made at 
the outset; though the completer justification is the sub- 
stance of the whole book. Some writers have assimied the 
reality of what is called the ''collective consciousness" of 
a society, meaning thereby a unitary consciousness of the 
society over and above that of the individuals comprised 
within it. This conception is examined in Chapter II and 
provisionally rejected. But it is maintained that a 
society, when it enjoys a long life and becomes highly 
organised, acquires a structure and qualities which are 
largely independent of the qualities of the individuals who 
enter into its composition and take part for a brief time in 
its life. It becomes an organised system of forces which 
has a life of its own, tendencies of its own, a power of 
motdding all its component individuals, and a power of 
perpetuating itself as a self -identical system, subject only 
to slow and gradual change. 

In an earlier work, in which I have sketched in outline 
the program of psychology, ^ I wrote : "When the student 
of behaviour has learnt from the various departments of 
psychology ... all that they can teach him of the 
structure, genesis, and modes of operation of the individ- 
ual mind, a large field still awaits his exploration. If we 
put aside as unproven such speculations as that touched on 
at the end of the foregoing chapter (the view of James that 
the human mind can enter into an actual union or com- 
munion with the divine mind) and refuse to admit any 
modes of communication or influence between minds other 
than through the normal channels of sense-perception and 
bodHy movement, we must nevertheless recognise the 

* Psychology, the Study of Behaviour, Home University Library, London, 
1912. 



Introduction 13 

existence in a certain sense of over-individual or collective 
minds. We may fairly define a mind as an organised sys- 
tem of mental or purposive forces; and, in the sense so 
defined every highly organised himian society may properly 
be said to possess a collective mind. For the collective 
actions which constitute the history of any such society 
are conditioned by an organisation which can only be 
described in terms of mind, and which yet is not comprised 
within the mind of any individual; the society is rather 
constituted by the system of relations obtaining between 
the individual minds which are its units of composition. 
Under any given circumstances the actions of the society 
are, or may be, very different from the mere sum of the 
actions with which its several members would react to the 
situation in the absence of the system of relations which 
render them a society; or, in other words, the thinking and 
acting of each man, in so far as he thinks and acts as a 
member of a society, are very different from his thinking 
and acting as an isolated individual." 

This passage has been cited by the author of a notable 
work on Sociology, ^ and made by him the text of a polemic 
against the conception of the group mind. He writes: 
''This passage contains two arguments in favour of the 
hypothesis of super-individual 'collective' minds, neither 
of which can stand examination. The 'definition' of a 
mind as 'an organised system of mental or purposive 
forces' is totally inadequate. When we speak of the mind 
of an individual we mean something more than this. The 
mind of each of us has a unity other than that of such a 
system." But I doubt whether Mr. Maciver could explain 
exactly what kind of unity it is that he postulates . Is it the 
unity of soul substance? I have myself contended at some 
length that this is a necessary postulate or hypothesis,^ 

* Community, by R. M. Maciver, London, 191 7. 
» In Body and Mind, London, 191 1. 



14 Introduction 

but I do not suppose that Maciver accepts or intends 
to refer to this conception. Is it the unity of consci- 
ousness or of self-consciousness? Then the answer is 
that this unity is by no means a general and established 
function of the individual mind; modern studies of the 
disintegration of personality have shown this to be a 
questionable assumption, undermined by the many facts 
of normal and abnormal psychology best resumed under 
Dr. Morton Prince's term "co-consciousness." 

The individual mind is a system of purposive forces, but 
the system is by no means always a harmonious system; 
it is but too apt to be the scene of fierce conflicts which 
sometimes (in the graver psychoneuroses) result in the 
rupture and disintegration of the system. I do not know 
how otherwise we are to describe the individual mind than 
as a system of mental forces ; and, until Maciver succeeds 
in showing in what other sense he conceives it to have "a 
unity other than that of such a system," his objection 
cannot be seriously entertained. He asks, of the alleged 
collective mind: "Does the system so created think and 
will and feel and act?"^ My answer, as set out in the 
following pages, is that it does all of these things. He asks 
further: "If a number of minds construct by their inter- 
activity an organisation 'which can only be described in 
terms of mind,* must we ascribe to the construction the 
very nature of the forces which constructed it?" To this 
I reply — my point is that the individual minds which enter 
into the structure of the group mind at any moment of its 
life do not construct it; rather, as they come to reflect self- 
consciousness, they find themselves already members of 
the system, moulded by it, sharing in its activities, in- 
fluenced by it at every moment in every thought and 
feeling and action in ways which they can neither fully 
understand nor escape from, struggle as they may to free 

^Op.cit.fp. 76. 



Introduction 15 

themselves from its infinitely subtle and multitudinous 
forces. And this system, as Maciver himself forcibly insists 
in another connection, does not consist of relations that 
exist external to and independent of the things related, 
namely the minds of individuals; it consists of the same 
stuff as the individual minds, its threads and parts lie 
within these minds ; but the parts in the several individual 
minds reciprocally imply and complement one another and 
together make up the system which consists wholly of 
them; and therefore, as I wrote, they can ''only be de- 
scribed in terms of mind." Any society is literally a more 
or less organised mental system ; the stuff of which it con- 
sists is mental stuff; the forces that operate within it are 
mental forces. Maciver argues further: "Social organisa- 
tions occur of every kind and every degree of universality. 
If England has a collective mind, why not Birmingham 
and why not each of its wards ? If a nation has a collec- 
tive mind, so also have a church and a trade union. And 
we shall have collective minds that are parts of greater 
collective minds, and collective minds that intersect other 
collective minds. ' * By this my withers are quite unwrung. 
What degree of organisation is necessary before a society 
can properly be said to enjoy collective mental life or have 
a group mind is a question of degree; and the exponent of 
the group mind is under no obligation to return a precise 
answer to this question. My contention is that the most 
highly organised groups display collective mental life in a 
way which justifies the conception of the group mind, and 
that we shall be helped to understand collective life in 
these most complex and difficult forms by studying it in 
the simpler less elaborated groups where the conception of 
a group mind is less clearly applicable. As regards the 
overlapping and intersection of groups and the consequent 
difficulty of assigning the limits of groups whose unity is 
implied by the term group mind, I would point out that 



i6 Introduction 



this difficulty arises only in connection with the lower forms 
of group life and that a parallel difficulty is presented by 
the lower forms of animal life. Is Maciver acquainted 
with the organisation of a sponge, or of the so-called coral 
** insect," or with that of the Portuguese man-o'-war? 
Would he deny the unity of a human being, or refuse to 
acknowledge his possession of a mind, because in these 
lower organisms the limits of the unit are hard or impos- 
sible to assign? Maciver goes on: ''The second argument 
is an obvious fallacy. If each man thinks and acts 
differently as a member of a crowd or association and as 
an individual standing out of any such immediate relation 
to his fellows, it is still each who thinks and acts ; the new 
determinations are determinations still of individual minds 
as they are influenced by aggregation. . . . But this 
is merely an extreme instance of the obvious fact that 
every mind is influenced by every kind of environment. 
To posit a super-individual mind because individual minds 
are altered by their relations to one another (as indeed they 
are altered by their relations to physical conditions) is 
surely gratuitous."^ To this I reply — the environment 
which influences the individual in his life as a member of an 
organised group is neither the sum of his fellow members 
as individuals, nor is it something that has other than a 
mental existence. It is the organised group as such, which 
exists only or chiefly in the persons of those composing it, 
but which does not exist in the mind of any one of them, 
and which operates upon each so powerfully just because it 
is something indefinitely greater, more powerful, more com- 
prehensive than the mere sum of those individuals. Maciver 
feels that "it is important to clear out of the way this mis- 
leading doctrine of super-individual minds corresponding to 
social or communal organisations and activities," and there- 
fore goes on to say that ''there is no more a great 'col- 
^ Op. ciL, p. 77. 



as 1 



Introduction 17 

lective' mind beyond the individual minds in society than 
there is a great * collective' tree beyond all the individual trees 
in nature. A collection of trees is a wood, and that we can 
study as a unity; so an aggregation of men is a society, a 
much more determinate unity ; but a collection of trees is not 
a collective tree, and neither is a collection of persons or 
minds a collective person or mind. We can speak of qualities 
of tree in abstraction from any particular tree, and we can 
speak of qualities of mind as such, or of some particular kind 
of mind in relation to some type of situation. Yet, in so doing, 
we are simply considering the characteristic of like elements 
of individual minds, as we might consider the characteristic 
or like elements discoverable in individual trees and kinds of 
trees. To conceive because of these identities, a ' collective' 
mind as existing heside those of individuals or a collective 
tree beside the variant examples is to run against the wall 
of the Idea theory." Now, I am not proposing to commit 
myself to this last-named theory. It is not because minds 
have much in common with one another that I speak of the 
collective mind, but because the group as such is more than 
the sum of the individuals, has its own life proceeding 
according to laws of group life, which are not the laws of 
individual life, and because its peculiar group life reacts 
upon and profoundly modifies the lives of the individuals. 
I would not call a forest a collective tree; but I would 
maintain that in certain respects a forest, a wood, or a 
copse, has in a rudimentary way a collective life. Thus, 
the forest remains the same forest though, after a hundred 
or a thousand years, all its constituent trees may be differ- 
ent individuals ; and again the forest as a whole may and 
does modify the life of each tree, as by attracting moisture, 
protecting from violent and cold winds, harbouring various 
plants and animals which affect the trees, and so on. 

But I will cite an eloquent passage from a recent work 
on sociology in support of my view. "The bonds of 



i8 Introduction 



1 

Lde I 



society are in the members of society, and not outside 
them. It is the memories, traditions, and beliefs of each 
which make up the social memories, traditions, and beliefs. 
Society like the kingdom of God is within us. Within us, 
within each of us, and yet greater than the thoughts and 
understandings of any of us. For the social thoughts and 
feelings and willings of each, the socialised mind of each, 
with the complex scheme of his relation to the social world, 
is no mere reproduction of the social thoughts and feelings 
and willings of the rest. Unity and difference here too 
weave their eternal web, the greater social scheme which 
none of us who are part of it can ever see in its entirety, 
but whose infinite subtlety and harmony we may more 
and more comprehend and admire. As a community 
grows in civilisation and culture, its traditions are no 
longer clear and definite ways of thinking, its usages are 
no longer uniform, its spirit is no longer to be summed up 
in a few phrases. But the spirit and tradition of a people 
become no less real in becoming more complex. Each 
member no longer embodies the whole tradition, but it is 
because each embodies some part of a greater tradition to 
which the freely-working individuality of each contributes. 
In this sense the spirit of a people, though existing only 
in the individual members, more and more surpasses the 
measure of any individual mind. Again, the social tradi- 
tion is expressed through institutions and records more 
permanent than the short-lived members of a community. 
These institutions and records are as it were stored social 
values (just as, in particular, books may be called stored 
social knowledge), in themselves nothings no part of the 
social mind, but the instrimients of the communication of 
traditions from member to member, as also from the dead 
past to the living present. In this way too, with the 
increase of these stored values, of which members realise 
parts but none the whole, the spirit of a people more and 



Introduction ig 

more surpasses the measure of any individual mind. It is 
these social forces within and without, working in the 
minds of individuals whose own social inheritance is an 
essential part of their individuality, stored in the institu- 
tions which they maintain from the past or establish in the 
present, that mould the communal spirit of the successive 
generations. In this sense too a community may be called 
greater than its members who exist at any one time, since 
the community itself marches out of the past into the 
present, and its members at any time are part of a great 
succession, themselves first moulded by communal forces 
before they become, so moulded, the active determinants 
of its future moulding. ' ' An admirable statement ! ' ' The 
greater social scheme which none of us can see in its 
entirety" — "the spirit of a people" which "more and more 
surpasses the measure of any individual mind" — "the 
commimal spirit of the successive generations" — "the 
community" which is "greater than its members who exist 
at any one time"; all these are alternative designations of 
that organised system of mental forces which exists over 
and above, though not independently of, the individuals in 
each of whom some fragment of it is embodied and which 
is the group mind. And the writer of this statement is 
Mr. R. M. Maciver; the passage occurs in the section of 
his book designed to "clear out of the way this misleading 
doctrine of super-individual minds." In the same section 
he goes on to say that "every association, every organised 
group, may and does have rights and obligations which are 
not the rights and obligations of any or all of its members 
taken distributively but only of the association acting as 
an organised imity. ... As a imity the association may 
become a 'juristic person,' a 'corporation,' and from the 
legal standpoint the character of imity so conceived is very 
important. ... The 'juristic person' is a real unity, 
and therefore more than a persona ficta, but the reality it 



20 Introduction 

possesses is of a totally different order of being from that 
of the persons who establish it." But, perversely as it 
seems to me, Maciver adds, ''the unity of which we are 
thinking is not mechanic or organic or even psychic." I 
cannot but think that, in thus denying the organic and 
psychic nature of this unity, Maciver is under the influence 
of that unfortunate and still prevalent way of thinking of 
the psychic as identical with the conscious which has given 
endless trouble in psychology ; because it has prompted the 
hopeless attempt, constantly renewed, to describe the 
structure and organisation of the mind in terms of conscious 
stuff, ignoring the all-important distinction between mental 
activity, which is sometimes, though perhaps not always 
consciousness, and mental structure which is not. The 
structure and organisation of the spirit of the commimity 
is in every respect as purely mental or psychic as is the 
structure and organisation of the individual mind. 

Maciver very properly goes on to bring his conclusions 
to the pragmatic test, the test of practical results. He 
writes: "These false analogies . . . are the sources of 
that most misleading antithesis which we draw between 
the individual and society, as though society were some- 
how other than its individuals. . . . Analyse these 
misleading analogies, and in the revelation of their falsity 
there is revealed also the falsity of this essential opposition 
of individual and society. Properly understood, the 
interests of ' the individual' are the interests of society."' 
But is it true that the interests of the individual are iden- 
tical with the interests of society? Obviously not. We 
have only to think of the condemned criminal; of the 
mentally defective to whom every enlightened society 
should deny the right of procreation ; of the young soldier 
who sacrifices his health, his limbs, his eyesight, or his life, 
and perhaps the welfare of his loved ones, in serving his 

^ Op. cit., p. 90. 



Introduction 21 

country. It is true that the progress of society is essen- 
tially an approximation towards an ideal state in which 
this identification would be completed ; but that is an ideal 
which can never be absolutely realised. Nor is it even 
true that the interests of society are identical with the 
interests of the majority of its members existing at any one 
time. It is, I think, highly probable that, if any great 
modem nation should unanimously and whole-heartedly 
embark upon a thorough -going scheme of state-socialism, 
the interests of the vast majority of individuals would be 
greatly promoted; they would be enabled to live more 
prosperously and comfortably with greater leisure and 
opportunity for the higher forms of activity. It is, how- 
ever, equally probable that the higher interests of the 
nation would be gravely endangered, that it would enter 
upon a period of increasing stagnation and diminishing 
vitality and, after a few generations had passed away 
would have slipped far down the slope which has led all 
great societies of the past to destruction. 

The question may be considered in relation to the Ger- 
man nation. As will be pointed out in a later chapter, the 
structure of that nation was, before the Great War, a 
menace to European civilisation. If the Germans had 
succeeded in their aims and had conquered Europe or 
the world, their individual interests would have been 
vastly promoted; they would have enjoyed immense ma- 
terial prosperity and a proud consciousness of having been 
chosen by God to rule the rest of mankind for their good. 
And this would have confirmed the nation in all its vices 
and would have finally crushed out of it all its potentiali- 
ties for developing into a well-organised nation of the 
higher type, fitted to play an honourable part in the future 
evolution of mankind. The same truth appears if we 
consider the problem of the responsibility of the German 
tiation for the War. So long as that people might retain 



22 Introduction 

its former organisation, which, I repeat, rendered it a 
menace to the civilisation and culture of the whole world, 
its antagonists coiild only treat it as a criminal and an out- 
law to be repressed at all costs and punished and kept 
down with the utmost severity. But, if it should achieve 
a new organisation, one which will give preponderance to 
the better and saner elements and traditions still preserved 
within it, then, although it will consist of the same in- 
dividuals in the main, it will have become a new or at least 
a transformed nation, one with which the other nations 
could enter into moral relations of amity or at least of 
mutual toleration, one which could be admitted to a place 
in the greater society which the League of Nations is to 
become. In other words, the same population would in 
virtue of a changed organisation, have become a different 
nation. 

Although Maciver, in making his attack upon the con- 
ception of the group mind, has done me the honour to 
choose me as its exponent, I do not stand alone in main- 
taining it. I am a little shy of citing in its support the 
philosophers of the school of German "idealism," because, 
as I have indicated in the Preface, I have little sympathy 
with that school. Yet, though one may disapprove of 
the methods and of most of the conclusions of a school of 
thought, one may still adduce in support of one's opinion 
such of its principles as seem to be well founded. I may, 
then, remind the reader that the conception of the State 
as a super-individual, a superhuman quasi-divine per- 
sonality, is the central conception of the political philo- 
sophy of German "idealism." That conception has, no 
doubt, played a considerable part in bringing upon Europe 
its present disaster. It was an instance of one of those 
philosophical ideas which claim to be the product of pure 
reason, yet in reality are adopted for the purpose of 
justifying and furthering some already existing interest or 



Introduction 23 

institution. In this case the institution in question was 
the Prussian state and those, Hegel and the rest, who set 
up this doctrine were servants of that state. They made 
of their doctrine an instrument for the suppression of 
individuaHty which greatly aided in producing the servile 
condition of the German people. Yet the distortions 
and exaggerations of the political philosophy of German 
* 'idealism" should not prejudice us against the germ of 
truth which it contains ; and the more enlightened British 
disciples of this school, from T. H. Green onwards, have 
sought with much success to winnow the grain from the 
chaff of the doctrine; and I cannot adduce better support 
for the conception of the group mind than the sentences 
in which a recent English writer, a sympathetic student of 
German "idealism," sums up the results of this winnowing 
process. ' Discussing the deficiencies of the individualist 
philosophy of the English utilitarian school, he writes : 
"Not a modification of the old Benthamite premises, but 
a new philosophy was needed; and that philosophy was 
provided by the idealist school, of which Green is the 
greatest representative. That school drew its inspiration 
immediately from Kant and Hegel, and ultimately from 
the old Greek philosophy of the city-state. The vital 
relation between the life of the individual and the life of 
the community, which alone gives the individual worth 
and significance, because it alone gives him the power of 
full moral development; the dependence of the individual, 
for all his rights and for all his liberty, on his membership 
of the community; the correlative duty of the community 
to guarantee to the individual all his rights (in other words, 
all the conditions necessary for his, and therefore for its 
own, full moral development) — these were the premises 
of the new philosophy. That philosophy could satisfy 

^ E. Barker, Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the 
Present Day, Home University Library, London, 19 15. 



24 Introduction 

the new needs of social progress, because it refused to 
worship a supposed individual liberty which was proving 
destructive of the real liberty of the vast majority, and 
preferred to emphasise the moral well-being and better- 
ment of the whole community, and to conceive of each of 
its members as attaining his own well-being and better- 
ment in and through the community. Herein lay, or 
seemed to lie, a revolution of ideas. Instead of starting 
from a central individual, to whom the social system is 
supposed to be adjusted, the idealist starts from a central 
social system, in which the individual must find his ap- 
pointed orbit of duty. But after all the revolution is only 
a restoration ; and what is restored is simply the Republic 
of Plato." ^ The same writer reminds us that "both 
Plato and Hegel thus imply the idea of a moral organism" ; 
and he adds, ''It is this conception of a moral organism 
which Bradley urges. It is implied in daily experience, 
and it is the only explanation of that experience. *In 
fact, what we call an individual man is what he is because 
of and by virtue of community, and communities are not 
mere names, but something real.' Already at birth the 
child is what he is in virtue of commimities; he has some- 
thing of the family character, something of the national 
character, something of the civilised character which 
comes from human society. As he grows, the community 
in which he lives pours itseH into his being in the language 
he learns and the social atmosphere he breathes, so that 
the content of his being implies in its every fibre relations 
of community. He is what he is by including in his 
essence the relations of the social State. . . . And 
regarding the State as a system, in which many spheres 
(the family, for instance) are subordinated to one sphere, 
and all the particular actions of individuals are subor- 
dinated to their various spheres, we may call it a moral 

^Op. ciL, p. II. 



Introduction 25 

organism, a systematic whole informed by a common 
purpose or function. As such it has an outer side — a body 
of institutions ; it has an inner side — a soul or spirit which 
sustains that body. And since it is a moral organism — 
since, that is to say, its parts are themselves conscious 
moral agents — that spirit resides in those parts and lives in 
their consciousness. In such an organism — and this is 
where it differs from an animal organism, and why we 
have to use the word moral — the parts are conscious : they 
know themselves in their position as parts of the whole, 
and they therefore know the whole of which they are 
parts. So far as they have such knowledge, and a will 
based upon it, so far is the moral organism self-conscious 
and self-willing. . . . Thus, on the one hand, we must 
recognise that the State lives ; that there is a nation's soul, 
self-conscious in its citizens; and that to each citizen this 
living soul assigns his field of accomplishment."' On a 
later page of the same book we read — "All the institu- 
tions of a country, so far as they are effective, are not only 
products of thought and creations of mind: they are 
thought, and they are mind. Otherwise we have a build- 
ing without a tenant, and a body without a mind. An 
Oxford college is not a group of buildings, though common 
speech gives that name to such a group: it is a group of 
men. But it is not a group of men in the sense of a group 
of bodies in propinquity : it is a group of men in the sense 
of a group of minds. That group of minds, in virtue of 
the common substance of an uniting idea, is itself a group- 
mind. There is no group-mind existing apart from the 
minds of the members of the group; the group-mind only 
exists in the minds of its members. But nevertheless it 
exists. There is a college mind, just as there is a Trade 
Union mind, or even a 'public mind' of the whole com- 
munity; and we are all conscious of such a mind as some- 

' Op. ciL, pp. 62-64. 



26 Introduction 

thing that exists in and along with the separate minds of 
the members, and over and above any sum of those minds 
created by mere addition."^ 

The political philosophers of the idealist school have not 
stood alone in recognising the reality of the group mind. 
Some of the lawyers, notably Maitland, have arrived at a 
very similar doctrine; and I cannot better summarise their 
conclusions than Barker has done in the following passage 
in the book from which I have already cited so freely. 
"The new doctrine," he writes, ''runs somewhat as follows. 
No permanent group, permanently organised for a durable 
object, can be regarded as a mere sum of persons, whose 
union, to have any rights or duties, must receive a legal 
confirmation. Permanent groups are themselves persons, 
group-persons, with a group-will of their own and a 
permanent character of their own; and they have become 
group-persons of themselves, without any creative act of 
the State. In a word, group-persons are real persons; 
and just because they are so, and possess such attributes 
of persons as will and character, they cannot have been 
made by the State. "^ 

I am not alone, then, in postulating the reality of the 
group mind. And I am glad to be able to cite evidence of 
this, because I know well that very many readers may at 
first find themselves repelled by this notion of a group 
mind, and that some of them will incline to regard it as 
the fantastic fad of an academic crank. 

I would say at once that the crucial point of difference 
between my own view of the group mind and that of the 

* Op. cit., p. 74. I consider Mr. Barker's brief statement of the nature of 
the group mind entirely acceptable, and it has given me great pleasure to 
find myself in such close harmony with it. It will perhaps give further 
weight to the fact of our agreement, if I add that the whole of this book, 
including the rest of this introductory chapter, was written before I took 
up Mr. Barker's brilliant little volume. 

» Op. cit., p. 175- 



Introduction 27 

German "idealist" school (at least in its more extreme 
representatives) is that I repudiate, provisionally at least, 
as an unverifiable hypothesis the conception of a collective 
or super-individual consciousness, somehow comprising 
the consciousness of the individuals composing the group. 
I have examined this conception in the following chapter 
and have stated my grounds for rejecting it. The differ- 
ence of practical conclusions arising from this difference 
of theory must obviously be very great. 

Several books dealing with collective psychology have 
been published in recent years. Of these perhaps the most 
notable are G. le Bon's Psychology of the Crowd, his Evolu- 
tion psychologique des peuples; Sighele's La foule criminelle; 
the Psychologic collective of Dr. A. A. Marie; and Alfred 
Fouillee's La Science sociale contemporaine. It is note- 
worthy that, with the exception of the last, all these books 
deal only with crowds or groups of low organisation; and 
their authors, like almost all others who have touched on 
this subject, are concerned chiefly to point out how partici- 
pation in the group life degrades the individual, how the 
group feels and thinks and acts on a much lower plane than 
the average plane of the individuals who compose it. 

On the other hand, many writers have insisted on the 
fact that it is only by participation in the life of society 
that any man can realise his higher potentialities; that 
society has ideals and aims and traditions loftier than any 
principles of conduct the individual can form for himself 
unaided; and that only by the further evolution of organ- 
ised society can mankind be raised to higher levels ; just as 
in the past it has been only through the development of 
organised society that the life of man has ceased to deserve 
the epithets "nasty, brutish, and short" which Hobbes 
appHed to it. 

We seem then to stand before a paradox. Participa- 
tion in group life degrades the individual, assimilating his 



28 Introduction 

mental processes to those of the crowd, whose brutality, 
inconstancy, and unreasoning impulsiveness have been 
the theme of many writers; yet only by participation in 
group life does man become fully man, only so does he 
rise above the level of the savage. 

The resolution of this paradox is the essential theme of 
this book. It examines and fully recognises the mental 
and moral defects of the crowd and its degrading effects 
upon all those who are caught up in it and carried away 
by the contagion of its reckless spirit. It then goes on to 
show how organisation of the group may, and generally 
does in large measure, cotmteract these degrading tenden- 
cies ; and how the better kinds of organisation render group 
life the great ennobling influence by aid of which alone 
man rises a little above the animals and may even aspire to 
fellowship with the angels. 



PART I 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE 
PSYCHOLOGY 



29 



I 



CHAPTER II 
The Mental Life of the Crowd 

IT is a notorious fact that, when a number of men think 
and feel and act together, the mental operations and 
the actions of each member of the group are apt to 
be very different from those he would achieve if he faced 
the situation as an isolated individual. Hence, though 
we may know each member of a group so intimately that 
we can, with some confidence, foretell his actions under 
given circumstances, we cannot foretell the behaviour of 
the group from our knowledge of the individuals alone. If 
we would understand and be able to predict the behaviour 
of the group, we must study the way in which the mental 
processes of its members are modified in virtue of their 
membership. That is to say, we must study the inter- 
actions between the members of the group and also those 
between the group as a whole and each member. We 
must examine also the forms of group organisation and 
their influence upon the life of the group. 

Groups differ greatly from one another in respect of the 
kind and degree of organisation they possess. In the 
simplest case the group has no organisation. In some 
cases the relations of the constituent individuals to one 
another and to the whole group are not in any way deter- 
mined or fixed by previous events ; such a group constitutes 
merely a mob. In other groups the individuals have 
certain determinate relations to one another which have 
arisen in one or more of three ways : 

31 



32 Principles of Collective Psychology 

(i) Certain relations may have been established be- 
tween the individuals, before they came together to form 
a group; for example, a parish council or a political meet- 
ing may be formed by persons belonging to various defi- 
nitely recognised classes, and their previously recognised 
relations will continue to play a part in determining the I 
collective deliberations and actions of the group; they will 
constitute an incipient organisation. 

(2) If any group enjoys continuity of existence, certain 
more or less constant relations, of subordination, deference, 
leadership and so forth, will inevitably become established 
between the individuals of which it is composed; and, of 
course, such relations will usually be deliberately estab- 
lished and maintained by any group that is united by a 
common purpose, in order that its efficiency may be 
promoted. 

(3) The group may have a continued existence and a 
more or less elaborate and definite organisation inde- 
pendent of the individuals of which it is composed; in 
such a case the individuals may change while the formal 
organisation of the group persists ; each person who enters 
it being received into some more or less well-defined and 
generally recognised position within the group, which 
formal position determines in great measure the nature of 
his relations to other members of the group and to the 
group as a whole. 

We can hardly imagine any concourse of human beings, 
however fortuitous it may be, utterly devoid of the rudi- 
ments of organisation of one or other of these three kinds; 
nevertheless, in many a fortuitous concourse the influence 
of such rudimentary organisation is so light as to be negli- 
gible. Such a group is an unorganised crowd or mob. The 
unorganised crowd presents many of the fundamental 
phenomena of collective psychology in relative simplicity; 
whereas the higher the degree of organisation of a group, 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 33 

the more complicated is its psychology. We shall, there- 
fore, study first the mental peculiarities of the unorganised 
crowd, and shall then go on to consider the modifications 
resulting from a simple and definite type of organisation. 

Not every mass of human beings gathered together in 
one place within sight and sound of one another consti- 
tutes a crowd in the psychological sense of the word. 
There is a dense gathering of several hundred individuals 
at the Mansion House Crossing at noon of every week-day; 
but ordinarily each of them is bent upon his own task, 
pursues his own ends, paying little or no regard to those 
about him. But let a fire-engine come galloping through 
the throng of traffic, or the Lord Mayor's state coach 
arrive, and instantly the concourse assumes in some degree 
the character of a psychological crowd. All eyes are 
turned upon the fire-engine or coach; the attention of all is 
directed to the same object; all experience in some degree 
the same emotion, and the state of mind of each person is 
in some degree affected by the mental processes of all 
those about him. Those are the fundamental conditions 
of collective mental life. In its more developed forms, an 
awareness of the crowd or group as such in the mind of each 
member plays an important part ; but this is not an essen- 
tial condition of its simpler manifestations. The essential 
conditions of collective mental action are, then, a common 
object of mental activity, a common mode of feeling in 
regard to it, and some degree of reciprocal influence be- 
tween the members of the group. It follows that not 
every aggregation of individuals is capable of becoming a 
psychological crowd and of enjoying a collective life. 
For the individuals must be capable of being interested in 
the same objects and of being affected in a similar way by 
them; there must be a certain degree of similarity of 
mental constitution among the individuals, a certain 
mental homogeneity of the group. Let a man stand on a 



34 Principles of Collective Psychology 

tub in the midst of a gathering of a hundred Englishmen 
and proceed to denoimce and abuse England; those in- 
dividuals at once become a crowd. Whereas, if the 
hundred men were of as many races and nations, their 
attention would hardly be attracted by the orator; for 
they would have no common interest in the topic of his 
discourse. Or let the man on the tub denounce the 
establishment of the Church of England, and the hundred 
Englishmen do not become a crowd; for, although all 
may be interested and attentive, the words of the orator 
evoke in them very diverse feelings and emotions, the 
sentiments they entertain for the Church of England being 
diverse in character. 

There must, then, be some degree of similarity of mental 
constitution, of interest and sentiment, among the per- 
sons who form a crowd, a certain degree of mental homo- 
geneity of the group. And the higher the degree of this 
mental homogeneity of any gathering of men, the more 
readily do they form a psychological crowd and the more 
striking and intense are the manifestations of collective 
life. All gatherings of men that are not purely fortuitous 
are apt to have a considerable degree of mental homogene- 
ity; thus the members of a political meeting are drawn 
together by common political opinions and sentiments; 
the audience in a concert room shares a common love of 
music or a common admiration for the composer, conduct- 
or, or great executant ; and a still higher degree of homo- 
geneity prevails when a number of persons of the same 
religious persuasion are gathered together at a great revival 
meeting. Consider how under such circumstances a very 
ordinary joke or point made by a political orator pro- 
vokes a huge delight; how, at a concert, the admiration 
of the applauding audience swells to a pitch of frantic en- 
thusiasm; how, at the skilfully conducted and successful 
revival meeting, the fervour of emotion is apt to rise, 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 35 

until it exceeds all normal modes of expression, and men 
and women give way to loud weeping or even hysterical 
convulsions. 

Such exaltation or intensification of emotion is the most 
striking result of the formation of a crowd, and is one of 
the principal sources of the attractiveness of the crowd. 
By participation in the mental life of a crowd, one's emo- 
tions are stirred to a pitch that they seldom or never 
attain under other conditions. This is for most men an 
intensely pleasurable experience; they are, as they say, 
carried out of themselves, they feel themselves caught up 
in a great wave of emotion, and cease to be aware of their 
individuality and all its limitations; that isolation of the 
individual, which oppresses every one of us, though it 
may not be explicitly formulated in his consciousness, is 
for the time being abolished. The repeated enjoyment of 
effects of this kind tends to generate a craving for them, 
and also a facility in the spread and intensification of 
emotion in this way; this is probably the principal cause 
of the greater excitability of urban populations as com- 
pared with dwellers in the country, and of the well-known 
violence and fickleness of the mobs of great cities. 

There is one kind of object in the presence of which no 
man remains indifferent and which evokes in almost all 
men" the same emotion, namely impending danger; hence 
the sudden appearance of imminent danger may instan- 
taneously convert any concourse of people into a crowd 
and produce the characteristic and terrible phenomena of 
a panic. In each man the instinct of fear is intensely 
excited; he experiences that horrible emotion in full force 
and is irresistibly impelled to save himself by flight. The 
terrible driving power of this impulse, excited to its high- 
est pitch under the favouring conditions, suppresses all 
other impulses and tendencies, all habits of self-restraint, 
of courtesy and consideration for others ; and we see men, 



36 Principles of Collective Psychology 

whom we might have supposed incapable of cruel or 
cowardly behaviour, trampling upon women and children, 
in their wild efforts to escape from the burning theatre, 
the sinking ship, or other place of danger. 

The panic is the crudest and simplest example of col- 
lective mental life. Groups of gregarious animals are 
liable to panic ; and the panic of a crowd of human beings 
seems to be generated by the same simple instinctive 
reactions as the panic of animals. The essence of the 
panic is the collective intensification of the instinctive 
excitement, with its emotion of fear and its impulse to 
flight. The principle of primitive sympathy' seems to 
afford a full and adequate explanation of such collective 
intensification of instinctive excitement. The principle 
is that, in man and in the gregarious animals generally, 
each instinct, with its characteristic primary emotion and 
specific impulse, is capable of being excited in one in- 
dividual by the expressions of the same emotion in another, 
in virtue of a special congenital adaptation of the instinct 
on its cognitive or perceptual side. In the crowd, then, 
the expressions of fear of each individual are perceived by 
his neighbours; and this perception intensifies the fear 
directly excited in them by the threatening danger. Each 
man perceives on every hand the symptoms of fear, the 
blanched distorted faces, the dilated pupils, the high- 
pitched trembling voices, and the screams of terror of his 
fellows; and with each such perception his own impulse 
and his own emotion rise to a higher pitch of intensity, and 
their expressions become correspondingly accentuated and 
more difficult to control. So the expressions of each mem- 
ber of the crowd work upon all other members within 
sight and hearing of him to intensify their excitement ; and 
the accentuated expressions of the emotion, so intensified, 

» This principle of primitive sympathy or simple direct induction or con- 
tagion of emotion was formulated in Chapter IV of my Social Psychology. 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 37 

react upon him to raise his own excitement to a still higher 
pitch; until in all individuals the instinct is excited in the 
highest possible degree. 

This principle of direct induction of emotion by way of 
the primitive sympathetic response enables us to under- 
stand the fact that a concourse of people (or animals) may 
be quickly turned into a panic-stricken crowd by some 
threatening object which is perceptible by only a few of 
the individuals present. A few persons near the stage of 
a theatre see flames dart out among the wings; then 
though the flames may be invisible to the rest of the house, 
the expressions of the startled few induce fear in their 
neighbours, and the excitement sweeps over the whole 
concourse like fire blown across the prairie. 

The same principle enables us to understand how a few 
fearless individuals may arrest the spread of a panic. If 
they experience no fear, or can completely arrest its ex- 
pressions, and can in any way make themselves prominent, 
can draw and hold the attention of their fellows to them- 
selves, then these others, instead of perceiving on every 
hand only the expressions of fear, perceive these few calm 
and resolute individuals ; the process of reciprocal intensi- 
fication of the excitement is checked and, if the danger is 
not too imminent and obvious, the panic may die away, 
leaving men ashamed and astonished at the intensity of 
their emotion and the violent irrational character of their 
behaviour. 

Other of the cruder primary emotions may spread 
through a crowd in very similar fashion, though the pro- 
cess is rarely so rapid and intense as in the case of fear. ^ 

* It was my good fortune to witness the almost instantaneous spread of 
anger through a crowd of five thousand warlike savages in the heart of 
Borneo. Representatives of all the tribes of a large district of Sarawak 
had been brought together by the resident magistrate for the purpose of 
strengthening friendly relations and cementing peace between the various 
tribes. All went smoothly, and the chiefs surrounded by their followers 



38 Principles of Collective Psychology 

And in every case the principal cause of the intensification 
of the emotion is the reciprocal action between the 
members of the crowd, according to the principle of 
sympathetic induction of emotion in one individual by its 
expressions in others. 

In panic, the dominance of the one emotion and its 
impulse is so complete as to allow no scope for any of the 
subtler modes of collective mental operation. But in 
other cases other conditions co-operate to determine the 
character of the emotional response of the crowd. Of 
these the most important are the awareness of the crowd 
as a whole in the mind of each member of it and his con- 
sciousness of his membership in the whole. When a 
common emotion pervades the crowd, each member be- 
comes more or less distinctly aware of the fact; and this 
gives him a sense of sharing in a mighty and irresistible 
power which renders him reckless of consequences and 
encourages him to give himself up to the prevailing emo- 
tion without restraint. Thus, in the case of an audience 
swept by an emotion of admiration for a brilliant singer, 
the thunder of applause, which shows each individual that 
his emotion is shared by all the rest, intensifies his own 

were gathered together in a large hall, rudely constructed of timber, to make 
public protestations of friendship. An air of peace and goodwill pervaded 
the assembly, until a small piece of wood fell from the roof upon the head 
of one of the leading chiefs, making a slight wound from which the blood 
trickled. Only the immediate neighbours of this chief observed the acci- 
dent or could perceive its effect; nevertheless in the space of a few seconds a 
wave of angry emotion swept over the whole assembly, and a general and 
bloody fight would have at once commenced, but that the Resident had 
insisted upon all weapons being left in the boats on the river 200 yards 
away. The great majority of the crowd rushed headlong to fetch their 
weapons from their boats, while the few who remained on the ground 
danced in fury or rushed to and fro gesticulating wildly. Happily the 
boats were widely scattered along the banks of the river, so that it was 
possible for the Resident, by means of persuasion, threats, and a show of 
armed force, to prevent the hostile parties coming together again with their 
weapons in hand. 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 39 

emotion, not only by way of sympathetic induction, but 
also because it frees him from that restraint of emotion 
which is habitual with most of us in the presence of any 
critical or adversely disposed spectators, and which the 
mere thought of such spectators tends to maintain and 
strengthen. Again, the oratory of a demagogue, if ad- 
dressed to a large crowd, will raise angry emotion to a 
pitch of intensity far higher than any it will attain if he is 
heard by a few persons only; and this is due not only to 
accentuation of the emotion by sympathetic induction, 
but also to the fact that, as the symptoms of the emotion 
begin to be manifested on all sides, each man becomes 
aware that it pervades the crowd, that the crowd as a 
whole is swayed by the same emotion and the same impulse 
as he himself feels, that none remains to criticise the vio- 
lence of his expressions. To which it must be added that 
the consciousness of the harmony of one's feelings with 
those of a mass of one's fellows, and the consequent sense 
of freedom from all restraint, are highly pleasurable to 
most men ; they find a pleasure in letting themselves go, 
in being swept away in the torrent of collective emotion. 
This is one of the secrets of the fascination which draws 
many thousands of spectators to a football match, and 
brings together the multitudes of baseball ''fans" bubbling 
over with eager anticipation of an emotional orgy. 

The fact that the emotions of crowds are apt to be very 
violent has long been recognised, and the popular mind, 
in seeking to account for it, has commonly postulated very 
special and even supernatural causes. The negro author 
of a most interesting book' has given the following de- 
scription of the religious frenzy of a crowd of Christian 
negroes: "An air of intense excitement possessed the 
mass of black folk. A suppressed terror hung in the air 
and seemed to seize us — a pythian madness, a demoniac 

' The Souls of Black Folk, by W. E. B. Du Bois, London, 1905. 



40 Principles of Collective Psychology 

possession, that lent terrible reality to song and word. The 
massive form of the preacher swayed and quivered as the 
words crowded to his lips. The people moaned and 
fluttered and then a gaunt brown woman suddenly leaped 
into the air and shrieked like a lost soul, while round 
about came wail and groan and outcry, a scene of human 
passion such as I had never even imagined." The author 
goes on to say that this frenzy is attributed by the black 
folk to the direct influence of the Spirit of the Lord, mak- 
ing mad the worshippers with supernatural joy, and that 
this belief is one of the leading features of their religion. 
Similar practices, depending upon the tendency of collec- 
tive emotion to rise to an extreme intensity, have been 
common to the peoples of many lands in all ages ; and 
similar supernatural explanations have been commonly 
devised and accepted. I need only remind the reader of 
the Dionysiac orgies of ancient Greece. 

The facts are so striking that for the popular mind they 
remain unaccotintable, and not to be mentioned without 
some vague reference to magnetism, electricity, hypnotism, 
or some mysterious contagion ; and even modern scientific 
writers have been led to adopt somewhat extravagant 
hypotheses to account for them. Thus Dr. Le Bon^ 
speaks of "the magnetic influence given out by the crowd" 
and says that, owing to this influence, ''or from some other 
cause of which we are ignorant, an individual immerged 
for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds him- 
self in a special state, which much resembles the state of 
fascination in which the hypnotised individual finds him- 
self in the hands of the hypnotiser." He goes on to say 
that in the hypnotised subject the conscious personality 
disappears and that his actions are the outcome of the 
imconscious activities of the spinal cord. Now, crowds 
undoubtedly display great suggestibility, but great sug- 

^ The Crowd, p. ii. 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 41 

gestibility does not necessarily imply hypnosis; and there 
is no ground for supposing that the members of a crowd 
are thrown into any such condition, save possibly in very 
rare instances. 

There are however two hypotheses, sometimes invoked 
for the explanation of the peculiarities of collective mental 
life, which demand serious consideration and which we 
may with advantage consider at this point. 

One is the hypothesis of telepathy. A considerable 
amount of respectable evidence has been brought forward 
in recent years to prove that one mind may directly influ- 
ence another by some obscure mode of action that does 
not involve the known organs of expression and of per- 
ception ; and much of this evidence seems to show that one 
mind may directly induce in another a state of conscious- 
ness similar to its own. If, then, such direct interaction 
between two minds can take place in an easily appreciable 
degree in certain instances, it would seem not improbable 
that a similar direct interaction, producing a lesser, and 
therefore less easily appreciable, degree of assimilation of 
the states of consciousness of the minds concerned, may be 
constantly and normally at work. If this were the case, 
such telepathic interaction might well play a very impor- 
tant part in collective mental life, and, where a large num- 
ber of persons is congregated, it might tend to produce that 
intensification of emotion which is so characteristic of 
crowds. In fact, if direct telepathic communication of 
emotion in however slight a degree is possible and normal, 
and especially if the influence is one that diminishes with 
distance, it may be expected to produce its most striking 
results among the members of a crowd ; for the emotion of 
each member might be expected to be intensified by the 
telepathic influence radiating from every other member. 
Some slight presumption in favour of such a mode of 
explanation is afforded by the fact that the popular use of 



42 Principles of Collective Psychology 

the word contagion in the present connection seems to 
imply, however vaguely, some such direct communication 
of emotion. But telepathic communication has not 
hitherto been indisputably established; and the observa- 
tions that afford so strong a presumption in its favour 
indicate that, if and in so far as it occurs, it does so sporadi- 
cally and only between individuals specially attuned to 
one another or in some abnormal mental state that renders 
them specially sensitive to the influence. ^ And, while the 
acceptance of the principle of sympathetic induction of an 
emotion, as an instinctive perceptual response to the ex- 
pressions of that emotion, renders unnecessary any further 
principle of explanation, the consideration of the condi- 
tions of the spread of emotion through crowds affords 
evidence that this mode of interaction of the individuals 
is all-important and that telepathic communication, if it 
occurs, is of secondary importance. For the spreading and 
the great intensification of emotion seem to depend upon 
its being given expressions that are perceptible by the 
senses. So long as its expressions are suppressed, the 
emotion of an assembly does not become excessive. It is 
only by eliciting and encouraging the expressions of emo- 
tions that the revivalist, the political orator, or the comic 
man on the music-hall stage, achieves his successes. That 
the expressions of an emotion are far more effective in this 
way than the emotion itself is recognised by the practice of 
the claqueurs. When an audience has once been induced 
to give expression to a common emotion, its members are, 
as it were, set in tune with one another; each man is aware 
that he is in harmony with all the rest as regards his feel- 
ings and emotions, and, even in the periods during which 
all expressions are suppressed by the audience, this aware- 

» In a recent work (What is Instinct? by Bingham Newland) the author, 
who shows an intimate knowledge of the life of wild animals, seems to postu- 
late some such direct telepathic rapport between animals of the same species. 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 43 

ness serves to sustain the mood and to prepare for fresh 
outbursts. The mere silence of an audience, the absence 
of coughs, shufflings, and uneasy movements, suffices to 
make each member aware that all his fellows are attentive 
and are responding with the appropriate emotion; but it 
is not until the applause, the indignation, or the laughter, 
breaks out in free expression that the emotion reaches its 
highest pitch. And a skilful orator or entertainer, recog- 
nising these facts, takes care to afford frequent opportu- 
nities for the collective displays of emotion. 

We must recognise, then, that, even if telepathic com- 
munication be proved to be possible in certain cases, there 
is not sufficient evidence of its operation in the spread of 
emotion through crowds, and that the facts are sufficiently 
explained by another principle of general and indisputable 
validity, the principle of primitive sympathy. 

The second hypothesis to be considered in this con- 
nection is that of the "collective consciousness." The 
conception of a collective consciousness has been reached 
by a large number of authors along several lines of observa- 
tion and reasoning and is seriously defended at the present 
time, more especially by several French and German 
writers. They maintain that, in some sense and manner, 
the consciousnesses of individuals are not wholly shut off 
from one another, but may co-operate in the genesis of, or 
share in the being of, a more comprehensive consciousness 
that exists beside and in addition to them. The concep- 
tion varies according to the route by which it is reached 
and the use that is made of it; but in all its varieties the 
conception remains extremely obscure; no one has suc- 
ceeded in making clear how the relation of the individual 
consciousness to the collective consciousness is to be 
conceived. In the writings of many metaphysicians, of 
whom Hegel is the most prominent, "the Absolute" seems 
to imply such a collective consciousness, an all-inclusive 



44 Principles of Collective Psychology 

world-consciousness of which the individual consciousness 
of each man is somehow but a constituent element or frag- 
mentary manifestation. But it would be unprofitable to 
attempt any discussion of the conception. We are con- 
cerned only with the empirical conception of a collective 
consciousness based on observation and induction. 

Such a conception finds its strongest support in the 
analogy afforded by a widely current view of the nature 
and conditions of the psychical individuality of men and 
animals; the view, namely, that the individual conscious- 
ness of any man or animal is the collective consciousness 
of the cells of which his body, or his nervous system, is 
composed. We know that the nervous system is made 
up of cells each of which is a vital unit, capable of living, 
of achieving its essential vital processes, independent of 
other cells; and we see free living cells that in many re- 
spects are comparable with these and to which we seem 
compelled, according to the principle of continuity, to 
attribute some germ of psychical life however rudimentary. 
What is known of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic 
development of the multicellular animal seems to justify 
us in regarding it as essentially an aggregate of such inde- 
pendent vital units, which, being formed by repeated 
fission from a single cell, adhere together and undergo 
differentiation and specialisation of functions. If then 
the parent cell, the germ cell, has a rudimentary psychical 
life, it is difficult to deny it altogether to the cells formed 
from it by fission ; and it is argued that all these cells con- 
tinue to enjoy a psychical life and that the consciousness 
of the individual man or animal is the collective conscious- 
ness of some or all of these cells. Now we know that the 
consciousness of any one of the higher animals has for its 
physical correlate at any moment processes going on 
simultaneously in many different parts and elements of 
the brain. It is argued, then, that we must suppose each 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 45 

cell of the brain to enjoy, whenever it is active, its own 
psychical life, and at the same time to contribute some- 
thing towards the unitary ''collective consciousness" of 
the whole organism, which thus exists beside, but not 
independent of, these rudimentary consciousnesses of the 
cells. If the view be accepted, it affords a close analogy 
with the supposed ''collective consciousness" of a group 
of men or a society. 

This conception of the collective nature of the conscious- 
ness of complex organisms finds strong support in two 
classes of facts. First, it finds support in the fact that, if 
individuals of many of the animal species of an interme- 
diate grade of complexity, such as some of the worms and 
some of the radiate animals, be cut into two or more parts, 
each part may continue to live and may become a complete 
organism by reconstitution of the lost parts. Since, then, 
we can hardly deny some integrated psychical life to such 
organism, some rudimentary consciousness, we seem 
compelled to believe that this consciousness may be 
divided into two or more consciousnesses, each of them 
being associated with the vital activities of one of the parts 
into which the organism is divided by the knife. Division 
of the organism into two parts is also the normal mode of 
reproduction in the animal world. Even the coming into 
existence of every human being seems to be bound up with 
the separation of a cell from the parent organism; and his 
existence as a separate psychical individual seems to result 
from the same process of physical division. And if one 
cell, when thus separated from the parent organism, can 
thus prove its possession of a psychical life by developing 
into a fully conscious organism, it is difficult to deny that 
all other cells have also their own psychical lives, even 
though they may be incapable of making it manifest to us 
by growing up into complex organisms when separated. 

The second class of facts that seem to justify this con- 



46 Principles of Collective Psychology 

ception of the consciousness of complex organisms are 
facts which have been studied and discussed widely in 
recent years under the head of mental dissociation or 
disintegration of personalities. Such disintegration seems 
to occur spontaneously as the essential feature of severe 
hysteria, and to be producible artificially and temporarily 
in some subjects, when they are thrown into deep hypnosis. 
In certain of these cases the behaviour of the human being 
seems to imply that it is the expression of two separate 
psychical individuals, formed by the splitting of the stream 
of consciousness and of mental activity of the individual 
into two streams. The two streams may be of co-ordinate 
complexity ; but more frequently one of them seems to be 
a mere trickle diverted from the main stream of personal 
consciousness. Since it is, from the nature of the case, 
always impossible to obtain any direct and certain proof 
that any behaviour other than one's own is the expression 
of conscious mental processes, it is not possible to prove 
that such division or disintegration of the personal con- 
sciousness actually takes place. But the facts appear to 
many of the psychologists who have studied them most 
carefully' to demand this interpretation; and this psychical 
disintegration seems to be accompanied by a functional 
dissociation of the nervous system into two or more sys- 
tems each of which functions independently of the others, 
— that is to say, a division of the nervous system compar- 
able with the division of the nervous system of the worm 
by the stroke of the knife which seems to split the psychical 
individual into two. 

The facts of both these orders would appear, then, to 
indicate that the physical organisation of the cells of a 

^See The Dissociation of a Personality, by Dr. Morton Prince; Double 
Personality, by A. Binet; The Psychology of Suggestion, by Boris Sidis; 
V automatism psychologique, by Pierre Janet; and the descriptions and dis- 
cussions of William James in his Principles of Psychology. 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 47 

complex organism is accompanied by an organisation of 
their psychical lives to form a ''collective consciousness," 
which in the human being becomes a personal self-con- 
sciousness ; and they would seem to show that the unity 
of personal consciousness has for its main condition the 
functional continuity of the protoplasm of the cells of the 
nervous system. 

Even before the facts of disintegration of personalities 
were known, several authors, notably von Hartmann' 
and G. T. Fechner, "" did not hesitate to make this last as- 
sumption ; and to assert that, if the brain of a man could be 
divided by a knife into two parts each of which continued 
to function, his consciousness would thus be divided into 
two consciousnesses; and conversely, that, if a functional 
bridge of nervous matter could be established between the 
brains of two men, their consciousnesses would fuse to a 
single consciousness. The discovery of these facts has 
greatly strengthened the case for this view ; and it has been 
accepted by so sound a psychologist and sober a philo- 
sopher as Fouillee. ^ 

It may be claimed that the consideration of the nature 
and behaviour of animal societies points to a similar con- 
clusion, and supplements in an important manner the 
argument founded on the divisibility of individual organ- 
isms. Such a line of reasoning has been most thoroughly 
pursued by Espinas in his very interesting book on animal 
societies. 4 He begins by considering the lower poly- 
cellular forms of animal life. Among them, especially 
among the hydrozoa or polypes, we find compound or 
colonial animals ; such an animal is a single living mass of 
which all the parts are in substantial and vital connection 
with one another, but is yet made up of a number of parts 
each of which is morphologically a complete or almost 

» Philosophy of the Unconscious. ' Die Psychophysik. 

3 Psychologic des idees forces. ^Les Societes animales, Paris, 1877. 



48 Principles of Collective Psychology 

complete creature; and these parts, though specialised 
for the performance of certain functions subserving the 
economy of the whole animal or coherent group of animals, 
are yet capable, if separated from the mass (as they some- 
times are by a natural process), of continuing to live, of 
growing, and of multiplying. There are found among such 
creatures very various degrees of specialisation of parts 
and of interdependence of parts; and in those cases in 
which the specialisation and interdependence of parts is 
great, the whole compound animal exhibits in its reactions 
so high a degree of integration that we seem justified in 
supposing that a common or " collective consciousness" is 
the psychical correlate of these integrated actions of the 
separable parts. Why then, it is asked, should this ''col- 
lective consciousness" cease to be, when the substantial 
continuity of the parts is interrupted? 

Espinas then goes on to describe animal societies of 
many types, and shows how, as we follow up the evolu- 
tionary scale, association and intimate interdependence 
and co-operation of their members tend to replace more and 
more completely the individualistic antagonism and un- 
mitigated competition of the lowest free-living organisms. 
He considers first the type of animal society which is 
essentially a family, a society of individuals all of which 
are derived from the same parent by fission or by budding. 
He argues that each such society of blood-relatives is a 
harmonious whole only because it enjoys a ''collective 
consciousness" over and above the consciousnesses of its 
constituent members; that, for example, a swarm of bees, 
which exhibits so great a uniformity of feeling and action 
and of which all the members come from the body of one 
parent, is in reality the material basis of a "collective 
consciousness," which presides over and is expressed by 
their collective actions ; that the ants of one household have 
such a collective consciousness, that they "are, in truth, a 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 49 

single thought in action, like the various cellules and fibres 
of the brain of a mammal." For, as he maintains, ''the 
consciousness of animals is not an absolute, indivisible 
thing. It is on the contrary a reality capable of being 
divided and diffused . . . thought in general and the im- 
pulses illuminated by it, are, like the forces of nature, sus- 
ceptible of diffusion, of transmission, of being shared, and 
can like these lie dormant where they are thinly diffused, or 
become vivid and intensified by concentration. The beings 
that have these attributes are no doubt monads ; but these 
monads are open to and communicate with one another." 

Espinas extends the view to other animal societies of 
which the members are not all derived from one parent, 
including human societies; and concludes that, except in 
the case of the Infusoria at the bottom of the scale and 
of the highly organised societies at the top of it, every 
individual consciousness is a part of a superior more com- 
prehensive consciousness of an individual of a higher order. 
He illustrates at length the fact with the consideration and 
explanation of which this chapter is concerned, the fact 
namely that, in all social groups, emotions and impulses 
are communicated and intensified from one individual to 
another; and he asks — ''If the essential elements of con- 
sciousness add themselves together and accumulate from 
one consciousness to another, how should the consciousness 
itself of the whole not be participated in by each?" He 
argues that to be real is not to be known to some other 
consciousness, but is to exist for oneself, to be conscious of 
oneself; that, in this sense, the "collective consciousness" 
of a society is the most real of all things ; that every society 
is therefore a living individual; and that, if we deny self- 
conscious individuality to a society, we must deny it 
equally to the mass of cells that make up an animal body; 
that, in short, we can find unity and individuality nowhere. 

This doctrine of the "collective consciousness" of 



50 Principles of Collective Psychology 

societies may seem bizarre to those to whom it is altogether 
novel; but it is one that cannot be Hghtly put aside; it 
demands serious consideration from any one who seeks 
the general principles of Collective Psychology. We have 
no certain knowledge from which its impossibility can be 
deduced ; and the new light thrown upon individuality by 
modern studies in psycho-pathology shows us that the 
indivisibility and strictly boimded imity of the individual 
human soul is a postulate that we must not continue to 
accept without critical examination. Nor is the concep- 
tion one that figures only in the writings of philosophers 
and therefore to be regarded with contemptuous indul- 
gence by men of affairs as but one of the strange, harmless 
foibles of such persons. It has a certain vogue in more 
popular writings; thus Renan wrote — "It has been re- 
marked that in face of a peril a nation or a city shows, like 
a living creature, a divination of the common danger, a 
secret sentiment of its own being and the need of its con- 
servation. Such is the obscure impulsion which provokes 
from time to time the displacement of a whole people or 
the emigration of masses, the crusades, the religious, 
political, or social revolutions." Phrases such as the soul 
of a people, the genius of a people, have long been current, 
and in almost every newspaper one may find important 
events and tendencies ascribed to the instinct of a people. 
It is probable that these phrases are written in miany 
instances without any explicit intention to imply a "col- 
lective national consciousness," but merely as well- 
sounding words that cloak our ignorance and give a vague 
appearance of understanding. Nevertheless, from its ap- 
plication to the life of nations, the doctrine of a collec- 
tive consciousness mainly derives its importance. It is 
seriously used by a number of vigorous contemporary 
writers, of whom Schaeffle^ is perhaps the most notable, 

^ Bau und Lehen des Socialen Korpers. 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 51 

to carry to its extreme the doctrine of Comte and Spencer 
that Society is an organism. Spencer specifically refused 
to complete his analogy between society and an animal 
organism by the acceptance of the hypothesis of a collec- 
tive consciousness ; and he insisted strongly on the impor- 
tance, for legislation and social effort of every kind, of 
holding fast to the consciousness of individual men as the 
final court of appeal, by reference to which the value of 
every institution and every form of social activity must be 
judged, the importance of regarding the welfare and happi- 
ness of individual men as the supreme end, in relation to 
which the welfare of the State is but a means. But those 
who, like Schaeffle, complete the analogy by acceptance 
of this hypothesis, regard a nation as an organism in the 
fullest sense of the word, as an organism that has its own 
pleasure and pain and its own conscious ends and purposes 
and strivings; as in fact a great individual which is con- 
scious and may be more or less perfectly self-conscious, 
conscious of itself, its past, its future, its purposes, its joys 
and its sorrows. And they do not scruple to draw the 
logical conclusion that the welfare of the individual should 
be completely subjected to that of the State; just as the 
welfare of an organ or cell of the human body is rightly 
held to be of infinitesimal value in comparison with that of 
the whole individual and to derive its importance only 
from its share in the constitution of the whole. This 
conception of the ''collective consciousness" has thus been 
used as one of the supports of * Trussianism" and has 
played its part in bringing about the Great War with all 
its immense mass of individual anguish. 

We must, then, examine the arguments upon which the 
doctrine is based, and ask — Do they suffice to render it 
probable, or to compel our acceptance of it, and to justify 
the complete subjection of the individual to the State? 

We have seen that a strong case is made out for the view 



52 Principles of Collective Psychology 

that the consciousness of a complex organism is the "col- 
lective consciousness" of all its cells, or of the cells of its 
nervous system ; and it must be admitted that, if this view 
could be definitely established, it would go far to justify 
the doctrine of the collective consciousness of societies. 
Yet the view is by no means established; there are great 
difficulties in the way of its acceptance. There is the 
difficulty which meets a doctrine of ''collective conscious- 
ness" in all its forms from that of Haeckel to that of Hegel, 
— the difficulty that the consciousness of the units is used 
twice over, once as the individual consciousness, once as 
an element entering into the collective consciousness; and 
no one has been able to suggest how this difficulty can be 
surmounted. It has been argued also, most forcibly per- 
haps by Lotze, ^ that what we know of the structure and 
fimctions of the brain compels us to adopt a very different 
interpretation of the facts. It is said that, since we cannot 
find any evidence of a unitary brain-process that might be 
regarded as the immediate physical correlate of the unitary 
stream of consciousness of the individual, but find rather 
that the physical correlate of the individual's conscious- 
ness at any moment is a number of discrete processes 
taking place simultaneously in anatomical elements widely 
scattered in different parts of the brain, we are compelled 
to assume that each of these acts upon some unitary sub- 
stance, some immaterial entity (which may be called the 
soul) producing a partial affection of its state. According 
to this view, then, the consciousness of any moment is the 
imitary resultant of all these influences simultaneously 
exerted on the soul, the unitary reaction of the soul upon 
these many influences. ^ 

^ Medicinische Psychologie. 

' I have argued that the great increase of knowledge of the functions and 
structxire of the nervous system attained by recent research does but provide 
for the argument a surer basis of empirical data; and I have contended that 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 53 

But, even if we cotild accept the view that the conscious- 
ness of the complex organism is the ''collective conscious- 
ness" of its cells, the analogy between an organism and a 
society, which constitutes the argument for the "collec- 
tive consciousness" of a society, would remain defective 
in one very important respect. If we accept that view, 
we must believe that the essential condition of the fusion 
of the consciousnesses of the cells is their spatial continuity 
no matter how utterly unintelligible this condition may 
seem; for the apparent disruption of consciousness on the 
solution of material continuity between the cells is the 
principal ground on which this view is founded. Now, no 
such continuity of substance exists between the members 
of any human group or society, and its absence constitutes 
a fatal flaw in the analogical argimient. 

If we pass by these serious difficulties, others arise as 
soon as we inquire what kinds of human groups have such 
"collective consciousness." Does the simple fortuitously 
gathered crowd possess it? Or is it confined to highly 
organised groups such as the leading modern nations? 
If every psychological crowd possesses it and owes its 
peculiarities of behaviour to it, does it come into being at 
the moment the individuals have their attention attracted 
to a common object and begin to be stirred by a common 
emotion ? And does it cease to be as soon as the crowd is 
resolved into its elements ? Or, if it is confined to nations 
or other highly organised groups, at what stage of their 
development does it come into being, and what are the 
limits of the groups of which it is the "collective conscious- 



some at least of the cases of disintegration of personality are more easily 
reconcilable with this view than with the contrary doctrine which regards 
the individual consciousness as the collective consciousness of the brain- 
cells. See my Body and Mind, a book I found myself compelled to write in 
order to arrive at a reasoned judgment on this difficult problem, which ob- 
trudes itself a,t the outset of the study of group life. 



54 Principles of Collective Psychology 

ness?'* Do the Poles share in the "collective conscious- 
ness" of the German nation, or the Bavarians in that of 
Prussia? Or do the Irish or the Welsh contribute their 
share to that of the English nation? 

Coming now to close quarters with the doctrine, we may- 
ask those who, like Schaeffle and Espinas, regard the "col- 
lective consciousness" as a bond which unites the members 
of a society and makes of them one living individual — Is 
this "collective consciousness" merely epiphenomenal in 
character? Or are we to regard it as reacting upon the 
consciousnesses or minds of the individuals of the group, 
and, through such reaction, playing a part in determining 
the behaviotu* of the group, or rather of the individuals of 
which the group is composed? For the actions of the 
group are merely the sum of the actions of its individuals. 
If the former alternative be adopted, then we may con- 
fidently say that the existence of a "collective conscious- 
ness" must from the nature of the case remain a mere 
speculation, incapable of verification; and that, if it does 
exist, since it cannot make any difference, cannot in any 
way affect human life and conduct, it is for us unreal, no 
matter how real it may be for itself, as Espinas maintains ; 
and we certainly are not called upon to have any regard 
for it or its happiness, nor can we invoke its aid in attempt- 
ing to explain the course of history and the phenomena of 
social life. If, on the other hand, the "collective con- 
sciousness" of groups and societies and peoples reacts upon 
individual minds and so plays a part in shaping the con- 
duct of men and societies, then the conception is a hy- 
pothesis which can only be justified by showing that it 
affords explanations of social phenomena which in its 
absence remain inexplicable. If it were found that social 
aggregates of any kind really do exhibit, as has often been 
maintained, great mass-movements, emigrations, religious 
or poHtical uprisings, and so forth, for which no adequate 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 55 

explanations can be found in the mental processes of 
individuals and the mental interactions of individuals by 
the ordinary means of expression and perception, a resort 
to some such hypothesis would be permissible; but it is an 
offence against the principles of scientific method to in- 
voke its aid, before we have exhausted the possibilities of 
explanation offered by well-known existents and forces. 
That certainly has not yet been done, and the upholders of 
the doctrine have hardly made any attempt to justify it in 
this the only possible manner in which it could be justified. 
The only evidence of this sort adduced by Espinas is the 
rapid spread of a common emotion and impulse throughout 
the members of animal and human groups; and of such 
phenomenon we have already found a sufficient explana- 
tion in those special adaptations of the instincts of all 
gregarious creatures which are unmistakably implied by 
the way in which the expression of an emotion directly 
evokes a display of the same emotion in any onlooking 
member of the species. 

We may, then, set aside the conception of a "collective 
consciousness" as a hypothesis to be held in reserve until 
the study of group life reveal phenomena that cannot be 
explained without its aid. For it may be confidently 
asserted that up to the present time no such evidence of a 
"collective consciousness" has been brought forward, and 
that there is no possibility of any such evidence being 
obtained before the principles of social psychology have 
been applied far more thoroughly than has yet been done 
to the explanation of the course of history. In adopting a 
so far unsympathetic attitude towards this doctrine, we 
ought to admit that, if there be any truth in it, the "col- 
lective consciousness" of even the most highly organised 
society may be still in a rudimentary stage, and that it 
may continue to gain in effectiveness and organisation 
with the further evolution of the society in question. 



56 Principles of Collective Psychology 

After this digression we may return to the consideration 
of the emotional characteristics of simple crowds. We 
have to notice not only that the emotions of crowds are 
apt to be excessively strong, but also that certain types of 
emotion are more apt than others to spread through a 
crowd, namely the coarser, simpler emotions and those 
which do not imply the existence of developed and refined 
sentiments. For many of the individuals of most crowds 
will be incapable of the more subtle complex emotions and 
will be devoid of the more refined sentiments; while such 
sentiments as the individuals possess will be in the main 
more diverse in proportion to their refinement and special 
character ; hence the chances of any crowd being homoge- 
neous as regards these emotions and sentiments is small. 
Whereas the primary emotions and the coarser sentiments 
may be common to all the members of a crowd ; any crowd 
is likely to be homogeneous in respect to them. 

On the other hand, a crowd is more apt to be swayed by 
the more generous of the coarser emotions, impulses, and 
sentiments than by those of a meaner, universally repro- 
bated kind. For each member of the crowd acts in full 
publicity; and his knowledge of, and regard for, public 
opinion will to some extent incline him to suppress the 
manifestation of feelings which he might indulge in private 
but wotild be ashamed of in public. Hence a crowd is 
more readily carried away by admiration for a noble deed, 
or by moral indignation against an act of cruelty, than by 
self-pity or jealousy or envy or a meanly vengeful emotion. 

At the same time, a crowd is apt to express feelings 
which imply less consideration and regard for others than 
the individual, representing the average morality and 
refinement of its members, would display when not under 
the influence of the crowd. Thus men, when members of 
a crowd, will witness with enjoyment scenes of brutality 
and suffering which, under other circumstances, they 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 57 

would turn away from, or would seek to terminate. To 
see a man thrown heavily to the ground is not pleasing to 
most individuals; yet the spectacle provokes roars of de- 
light from the crowd at a football match. How many of 
the spectators, who, as members of a crowd, hugely enjoy 
looking on at a prize-fight or a bullfight, would shrink 
from witnessing it as isolated individuals! How many 
boys will join with a crowd of others in cruelly teasing 
another boy, an animal, an old woman, or a drunken man, 
who individually are incapable of such *' thoughtless" 
conduct ! It may be doubted whether even the depraved 
population of Imperial Rome could have individually wit- 
nessed without aversion the destruction of Christians in 
the Coliseum. 

This character of crowds seems to be due to two pecu- 
liarities of the collective mental state. In the first place, 
the individual, in becoming one of a crowd, loses in some 
degree his self -consciousness, his awareness of himself as a 
distinct personality, and with it goes also something of his 
consciousness of his specifically personal relations; he 
becomes to a certain extent depersonalised. In the second 
place, and intimately connected with this last change, is a 
diminution of the sense of personal responsibility: the 
individual feels himself enveloped and overshadowed and 
carried away by forces which he is powerless to control ; he 
therefore does not feel called upon to maintain the attitude 
of self-criticism and self-restraint which under ordinary 
circumstances are habitual to him, his more refined ideals 
of behaviour fail to assert themselves against the over- 
whelming forces that envelop him. 

The Intellectual Processes of Simple Crowds 

No fact has been more strongly insisted upon by writers 
on the psychology of crowds than the low degree of intelli- 



58 Principles of Collective Psychology 



gence implied by their collective actions. Not only mobs 
or simple crowds, but such bodies as juries, committees 
corporations of all sorts, which are partially organised 
groups, are notoriously liable to pass judgments, to form 
decisions, to enact rules or laws, so obviously erroneous, 
unwise, or defective that any one, even the least intelligent 
member of the group concerned, might have been expected 
to produce a better result. 

The principal ground of the low order of intelligence dis- 
played by simple crowds is that the ideas and reasonings 
which can be collectively understood and accepted must 
be such as can be appreciated by the lower order of minds 
among the crowd. These least intelligent minds bring 
down the intelligence of the whole to their own level. This 
is true in some degree even of crowds composed of highly 
educated persons; for, as in the case of the emotions and 
sentiments, the higher faculties are always more or less 
specialised and differentiated in various ways through 
differences of nurture and training; whereas the simpler 
intellectual faculties and tendencies are common to all 
men. 

A second condition, which co-operates with the foregoing 
to keep the intellectual processes of crowds at a low level, 
is the increased suggestibility of its members. Here is one 
of the most striking facts of collective mental life. A crowd 
impresses each of its members with a sense of its power, its 
imknown capacities, its unlimited and mysterious possi- 
bilities; and these, as I have shown in Chapter III of my 
Social Psychology, are the attributes that excite in us the 
instinct of subjection and so throw us into the receptive 
suggestible attitude towards the object that displays them. 
Mere numbers are capable of exerting this effect upon most 
of us; but the effect of numbers is greatly increased if all 
display a common emotion and speak with one voice; the 
crowd has then, if we are in its presence, a well-nigh irre- 



1 

A 1 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 59 

sistible prestige. Hence even the highly intelligent and 
self-reliant member of a crowd is apt to find his critical 
reserve broken down; and, when an orator makes some 
proposition which the mass of the crowd applauds but 
which each more intelligent member would as an individ- 
ual reject with scorn, it is apt to be uncritically accepted 
by all alike; because it comes to each, not as the proposi- 
tion of the orator alone, but as a proposition which voices 
the mind of the crowd, which comes from the mass of men 
he sees around him and so comes with the power of a mass- 
suggestion. 

A further ground of the suggestibility of the crowd is 
that prevalence of emotional excitement which was dis- 
cussed in the foregoing pages. It is well recognised that 
almost any emotional excitement increases the suggesti- 
bility of the individual, though the explanation of the fact 
remains obscure. I have suggested that the explanation 
is to be found in the principle of the vicarious usage of 
nervous energy, the principle that nervous energy, liber- 
ated in any one part of the nervous system, may overflow 
the channels of the system in which it is liberated and re- 
enforce processes initiated in other systems. If this be 
true, we can see how any condition of excitement will 
favour suggestibility ; for it will re-enforce whatever idea or 
impulse may have been awakened and made dominant by 
"suggestion." The principle requires perhaps the follov/- 
ing limitation. Emotion which is finding outlet in well- 
directed action is probably unfavourable to all such 
"suggestions" as are not congruent with its tendencies. 
It is vague emotion, or such as finds no appropriate ex- 
pression in action, that favours suggestibility. The most 
striking illustrations of the greatly increased suggestibility 
of crowds are afforded by well-authenticated instances of 
collective hallucination, instances which, so long as we fail 
to take into account the abnormal suggestibility of the 



6o Principles of Collective Psychology 

members of crowds, seem utterly mysterious, incredible, 
and super-normal. 

Again, the capacity of crowds to arrive at correct con- 
clusions by any process of reasoning is apt to be diminished 
in another way by the exaltation of emotion to which, as 
we have seen, they are peculiarly liable. It is a familiar 
fact that correct observation and reasoning are hampered 
by emotion; for all ideas congruent with the prevailing 
emotion come far more readily to consciousness and persist 
more stably than ideas incongruent with it, and conclu- 
sions congruent with the prevailing emotion and desire 
are accepted readily and uncritically; whereas those op- 
posed to them can hardly find acceptance in the minds of 
most men, no matter how simple and convincing be the 
reasoning that leads to them. 

The diminution or abolition of the sense of personal 
responsibility, which results from membership in a crowd 
and which, as we have seen, favours the display of its 
emotions, tends also to lower the level of its intellectual 
processes. Wherever men have to come to a collective 
decision or to undertake collective action of any sort, this 
effect plays an important part. The weight of respon- 
sibility that would be felt by any one man, deciding or 
acting alone, is apt to be divided among all the members of 
the group ; so that for each man it is diminished in propor- 
tion to the number of persons taking part in the affair. 
Hence the attention and care devoted by each man to the 
task of deliberation, observation, or execution, are less 
keen and continuously sustained, and a judgment or deci- 
sion is more lightly and easily arrived at, grounds which 
the individual, deliberating alone, would reject or weigh 
again and again serving to determine an immediate judg- 
ment. The principle is well recognised in practical life. 
We do not set ten men to keep the look-out on ship-board, 
but only one; though the safety of the ship and of all that it 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 6i 

carries depends upon his unremitting alertness. We see 
the principle recognised in the institution of the jury. 
But for the weakening of the individual sense of responsi- 
bility, juries would seldom be found capable of finding a 
prisoner guilty of murder and so condemning him to death; 
while, by the restriction of the jury to a comparatively 
small number, the worst features of collective mental life 
are avoided. 

We see the working of the principle not only in simple 
crowds, but also in groups of very considerable degrees of 
organisation. We see it in the way in which many a man, 
who would shrink from the responsibility of directing a 
great and complicated commercial undertaking, will cheer- 
fully join a board of directors each of whom is perhaps no 
better qualified than himself to conduct the business of the 
concern. We may recognise its effects also in the cheerful 
levity, not to say hilarity, that frequently pervades our 
House of Commons ; for most of its well-meaning members 
would be utterly crushed imder the weight of their legisla- 
tive responsibility, were it not divided in small fractions 
among them. 

But the low sense of responsibility of the crowd is not 
due to the division of responsibility alone. In the case of 
the simple crowd, it is due also in large part to the fact 
that such a crowd has but a very low grade of self -con- 
sciousness and no self -regarding sentiment ; that is to say, 
the members of the crowd have but a dim consciousness of 
the crowd as a whole, but very little knowledge of its tend- 
encies and capacities, and no sentiment of love, respect, or 
regard of any kind for it and its reputation in the eyes of 
men. Hence, since the responsibility falls on the whole 
crowd, and any loss or gain of reputation affects the crowd 
and hardly at all the individuals who are merged in it, 
they are not stimulated to exert care and self-restraint 
and critical deliberation in forming their judgments, in 



62 Principles of Collective Psychology 

arriving at decisions, or in executing any task collectively 
undertaken. The results of these two conditions of col- 
lective mental life are well summed up in the popular 
dictum that a corporation has no conscience. 

Since all these factors co-operate to keep the intellectual 
activity of the simple crowd on a low level, it follows that 
very simple intellectual processes must be relied on by the 
orator who would sway a crowd ; he must rely on abuse 
and ridicule of opponents, or unmeasured praise of friends; 
on flattery; on the argumentum ad hominem; on induction 
by simple enumeration of a few striking instances; on 
obvious and superficial analogies ; on the evocation of vivid 
representative imagery rather than of abstract ideas ; and, 
above all, on confident assertion and re-iteration, and on a 
display of the coarser emotions. 

Since the individuals comprised in a crowd are apt to be 
influenced in all these ways by the mass of their fellows, it 
follows that the mental processes, the thought and feelings 
and actions, of each one will be as a rule very different from 
what they would be if he faced a similar situation as an 
isolated individual; the mental processes of each one are 
profoundly modified by his mental interactions with all the 
other members of the crowd. Therefore the collective 
actions of a crowd are not simply the resultants of all the 
tendencies to thought and action of the individuals, as 
such, but may be very different from any such resultant. 
And they are not merely the expression of the individual 
tendencies of the average member, nor yet of the mass of 
least intelligent and refined members; they may be, and 
often are, such as no one of the members acting alone 
would ever display or attempt. 

It must be added that all the peculiarities of collective 
mental process mentioned above express themselves very 
readily in the actions of simple crowds, because such a 
crowd is incapable of resolution and volition in the true 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 63 

sense of the words. I have shown' that individual resolu- 
tion and volition are only rendered possible by the posses- 
sion of a well-developed self -consciousness and self -regard- 
ing sentiment. But a simple crowd has at the most only a 
rudimentary self -consciousness and has no self-regarding 
sentiment. Hence its actions are the direct issue of the 
various impulses that are collectively evoked ; and, though 
it may be collectively conscious of the end towards which 
it is impelled, and though all the individuals may desire to 
effect or realise this end, and to that extent may be said 
to be capable of purpose; yet such an impulse or desire 
cannot be steadied, strengthened, renewed, or supported 
and maintained, in opposition to any other impulse that 
may come into play, by an impulse springing from the self- 
regarding sentiment in the way which constitutes resolu- 
tion and volition. Just so far as the self -regarding senti- 
ment of individuals comes into play and they exert their 
individual volitions, they cease to act as members of a 
crowd. The actions of the simple crowd are thus not the 
outcome of a general will, nor are they the resultant of the 
wills of all its members; they are simply not volitional in 
the true sense, but rather impulsive. They are compar- 
able with the actions of an animal rather than with those of 
a man. It is the lack of the conditions necessary to collec- 
tive resolution and volition that renders a crowd so fickle 
and inconsistent ; so capable of passing from one extreme of 
action to another, of hurrying to death the man whom it 
glorified at an earlier moment, or of turning from savage 
butchery to tender and tearful solicitude. Such incapac- 
ity of the crowd for resolution and volition, together with 
the increased suggestibility of its members, accounts for 
the fact that a crowd may be easily induced to follow as a 
leader any one who, by means of the elementary reason- 
ing processes suited to its intellectual capacity, can suc- 
' Social Psychology, Chapter IX. 



64 Principles of Collective Psychology 

ceed in suggesting to it the desirability of any course of 
action. 

We may sum up the psychological character of the 
tinorganised or simple crowd by saying that it is exces- 
sively emotional, impulsive, violent, fickle, inconsistent, 
irresolute and extreme in action, displaying only the 
coarser emotions and the less refined sentiments; ex- 
tremely suggestible, careless in deliberation, hasty in 
judgment, incapable of any but the simpler and imperfect 
forms of reasoning; easily swayed and led, lacking in self- 
consciousness, devoid of self-respect and of sense of 
responsibility, and apt to be carried away by the con- 
sciousness of its own force, so that it tends to produce all 
the manifestations we have learnt to expect of any irre- 
sponsible and absolute power. Hence its behaviour is 
like that of an imruly child or an untutored passionate 
savage in a strange situation, rather than like that of its 
average member; and in the worst cases it is like that of a 
wild beast, rather than like that of human beings. 

All these characteristics of the crowd were exemplified 
on a great scale in Paris at the time of the great Revolution, 
when masses of men that were little more than unorgan- 
ised crowds escaped from all control and exerted supreme 
power; and writers on the topic have drawn many striking 
illustrations from the history of the days of the Terror.^ 
The imderstanding of these more elementary facts and 
principles of group psychology will prevent us falling into 
such an error as was committed by our greatest political phi- 
losopher, Edmund Burke, when he condemned the French 
people in the most violent terms on account of the ter- 
rible events of the Revolution; for he attributed to the 
inhabitants of France in general, as'individuals, the capaci- 

* See especially A. StoU's Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Volker- 
psychologie, where the events of the French Revolution have been treated in 
some detail from this point of view. 



The Mental Life of the Crowd 65 

ties for violence and brutality and the gross defects of 
intelligence and self-restraint that were displayed by the 
Parisian crowds of the time; whereas the study of collec- 
tive psychology has led us to see that the actions of a crowd 
afford no measure of the moral and intellectual status of 
the individuals of which it is composed. So, when we hear 
of minor outrages committed by a crowd of undergradu- 
ates or suffragettes, a knowledge of group psychology will 
save us from the error of attributing to the individuals 
concerned the low grade of intelligence and decency that 
might seem to be implied by the deeds performed by them 
collectively. The same understanding will also resolve 
for us some seeming paradoxes; for example, the paradox 
that, while in the year 1906 the newspapers contained 
many reports of almost incredible brutalities committed 
by the peasants in many different parts of Russia, an able 
correspondent, who was studying the peasants at that 
very timic, ascribed to them, as the most striking quality 
of their characters, an exceptional humaneness and 
kindliness. ' 

It will be maintained on a later page that we may pro- 
perly speak not only of a collective will, but also of the 
collective mind of an organised group, for example, of the 
mind and will of a nation. We must, then, ask at this 
stage — Can we properly speak of the collective mind of an 
tmorganised crowd? The question is merely one as to 
the proper use of words and therefore not of the first 
importance. If we had found reason to accept the hy- 
pothesis of a ** collective consciousness" of a group, and to 
believe that the peculiarities of behaviour of a crowd are 
due to a "collective consciousness," then we should cer- 
tainly have to admit the propriety of regarding the crowd 
as having a collective mind. But we have provisionally 
rejected that hypothesis, and have maintained that the 

' Hon. Maurice Baring in an article in the Morning Post of April 21, 1906. 
5 



66 Principles of Collective Psychology 



only consciousness of a crowd or other group is the con- 
sciousnesses of its constituent individuals. In the absence 
of any "collective consciousness" we may still speak of 
collective minds ; for we have defined a mind as an organ- 
ised system of interacting mental or psychical forces. 
This definition, while allowing us to speak of the collective 
mind of such a group as a well-developed nation, hardly 
allows us to attribute such a mind to a simple crowd : for 
the interplay of its mental forces is not determined by the 
existence of an organised system of relations between the 
elements in which the forces are generated; and such de- 
termination is an essential feature of whatever can be 
called a mind. 



^ 



CHAPTER III 
The Highly Organised Group 

THE peculiarities of simple crowds tend to appear in 
all group life; but they are modified in proportion 
as the group is removed in character from a simple 
crowd, a fortuitous congregation of men of more or less 
similar tendencies and sentiments. Many crowds are 
not fortuitous gatherings, but are brought together by the 
common interest of their members in some object or topic. 
These may differ from the simple fortuitous crowd only in 
being more homogeneous as regards the sentiments and 
interests of their members; their greater homogeneity 
does not in itself raise them above the mental level of the 
fortuitous crowd; it merely intensifies the peculiarities of 
group life, especially as regards the intensity of the collec- 
tive emotion. 

There is, however, one condition that may raise the 
behaviour of a temporary and unorganised crowd to a 
higher plane, namely the presence of a clearly defined com- 
mon purpose in the minds of all its members. Such a 
crowd, for example a crowd of white men in one of the 
Southern States of North America setting out to lynch 
a negro who is supposed to have committed some flagrant 
crime, will display most of the characteristics of the com- 
mon crowd, the violence and brutality of emotion and 
impulse, the lack of restraint, the diminished sense of re- 
sponsibility, the increased suggestibility and incapacity 
for arriving at correct conclusions by deliberation and the 

67 



68 Principles of Collective Psychology 

weighing of evidence. But it will not exhibit the fickle- 
ness of a common crowd, the easy yielding to distracting 
impressions and to suggestions that are opposed to the 
common purpose Such a crowd may seize and execute 
its victim with inflexible determination, perhaps with a 
brutality and a ruthless disregard of all deterrent consider- 
ations of which no one of its members would be individu- 
ally capable; and may then at once break up, each man 
retiirning quietly and seriously to his home, in a way which 
has often been described by witnesses astonished at the 
contrast between the behaviour of the crowd and that of 
the individuals into which it suddenly resolves itself. 

The behaviour of a crowd of this kind raises the problem 
of the general or collective will. It was said in the fore- 
going chapter that the actions of a common crowd cannot 
properly be regarded as volitional, because they are the 
immediate outcome of the primary impulses. Yet the 
actions of a crowd of the kind we are now considering are 
the issue of true resolutions formed by each member of the 
crowd, and are, therefore, truly volitional. Nevertheless, 
they are the expression not of a general or collective will, 
but merely of the wills of all the individuals; and, even if 
there arise differences between the members and a conflict 
of wills as to the mode of achieving the common end, and 
if the issue be determined simply by the stronger party 
overbearing the weaker and securing their co-operation, 
that still does not constitute the expression of a general 
will. For a collective or general will only exists where 
some idea of the whole group and some sentiment for it 
as such exists in the minds of the persons composing it. 
But we may with advantage examine the nature of collec- 
tive volition on a later page, in relation to the life of a 
highly organised group, such as an army. 

There are five conditions of principal importance in 
raising collective mental life to a higher level than the 



The Highly Organised Group 69 

unorganised crowd can reach, no matter how homogeneous 
the crowd may be in ideas and sentiments nor how con- 
vergent the desires and voHtions of its members. These 
are the principal conditions which favour and render 
possible the formation of a group mind, in addition to those 
more fundamental conditions of collective life which we 
have noted in the foregoing chapter. 

The first of these conditions, which is the basis of all the 
rest, is some degree of continuity of existence of the group. 
The continuity may be predominantly material or formal ; 
that is to say, it may consist either in the persistence of the 
same individuals as an inter-communicating group, or in 
the persistence of the system of generally recognised posi- 
tions each of which is occupied by a succession of in- 
dividuals. Most permanent groups exhibit both forms of 
continuity in a certain degree ; for, the material continuity 
of a group being given, some degree of formal continuity 
will commonly be established within it. The most highly 
organised groups, such as well-developed nations, exhibit 
both forms in the highest degree. 

A second very important condition, essential to any 
highly developed form of collective life, is that in the minds 
of the mass of the members of the group there shall be 
formed some adequate idea of the group, of its nature, 
composition, functions, and capacities, and of the relations 
of the individuals to the group. The diffusion of this idea 
among the members of the group, which constitutes the 
self-consciousness of the group mind, would be of little 
effect or importance, if it were not that, as with the idea 
of the individual self, a sentiment of some kind almost in- 
evitably becomes organised about this idea and is the main 
condition of its growth in richness of meaning ; a sentiment 
for the group which becomes the source of emotions and of 
impulses to action having for their objects the group and 
its relations to other groups. 



70 Principles of Collective Psychology 



A third condition very favourable to the development of 
the collective mind of a group, though not perhaps ab- 
solutely essential, is the interaction (especially in the form 
of conflict and rivalry) of the group with other similar 
groups animated by different ideals and piirposes, and 
swayed by different traditions and customs. The im- 
portance of such interaction of groups lies chiefly in the 
fact that it greatly promotes the self-knowledge and self- 
sentiment of each group. 

Fourthly, the existence of a body of traditions and cus- 
toms and habits in the minds of the members of the group 
determining their relations to one another and to the group 
as a whole. 

Lastly, organisation of the group, consisting in the 
differentiation and speciaHsation of the functions of its 
constituents — the individuals and classes or groups of 
individuals within the group. This organisation may rest 
wholly or in part upon the conditions of the fourth class, 
traditions, customs, and habits. But it may be in part 
imposed on the group and maintained by the authority of 
some external power. 

The capacity for collective life of an organised group 
whose organisation is imposed upon it and wholly main- 
tained by an external authority is but little superior to 
that of a simple crowd. Such a group will differ from 
the simple crowd chiefly in exhibiting greater control of 
its impulses and a greater continuity of direction of its 
activities; but these qualities are due to the external 
compelling power and are not truly the expression of its 
collective mental life. An army of slaves or, in a less 
complete degree, an army of mercenaries is the type of this 
kind of organised group; and a people ruled by a strong 
despot relying on a mercenary or foreign army approxi- 
mates to it. The first aim of the power that would main- 
tain such an organisation must always be to prevent and 



r\ 



The Highly Organised Group 71 

suppress collective life, by forbidding gatherings and pub- 
lic discussions, by rendering communications between the 
parts difficult, and by enforcing a rigid discipline. For 
such an organisation is essentially unstable. 

We may illustrate the influence of these five conditions 
by considering how in a group of relatively simple kind, in 
which they are all present, they favour collective life and 
raise it to a higher level of efficiency. Such a group is a 
patriot army fighting in a cause that elicits the enthusiasm 
of its members ; such were the armies of Japan in the late 
Russo-Japanese war; they exhibited in a high degree and 
in relative simplicity the operation of all the conditions we 
have enumerated. 

Such an army exhibits the exaltation of emotion com- 
mon to all psychological crowds. This intensification of 
emotion enables men to face danger and certain death with 
enthusiasm, and on other occasions may, even in the ar- 
mies of undoubtedly courageous and warlike nations, result 
in panic and a rout. But in all other respects the charac- 
teristics of the simple crowd are profoundly modified. 
The formal continuity of the existence of the army and of 
its several units secures for it, even though its personnel 
be changed at a rapid rate, a past and therefore a tradi- 
tion, a self-consciousness and a self-regarding sentiment, a 
pride in its past and a tradition of high conduct and 
achievement; for past failures are discreetly forgotten and 
only its past successes and glories are kept in memory. 
The traditional group consciousness and sentiment are 
fostered by every wise commander, both in the army as 
a whole and in each separate department and regiment. 
Is not the superiority in battle of such bodies as the 
famous Tenth Legion due as much to such self-con- 
scious tradition and sentiment as to the presence of veter- 
ans in its ranks? And is not the same true of such 
regiments as the Black Watch, the Gordons, the Grena- 



72 Principles of Collective Psychology 



I 



dier Guards, and the other famous regiments of the British 
army? 

The third of the conditions mentioned above is also very 
obviously present in the case of an army in the field — 
namely, interaction with a similar group having different 
purposes, traditions, and sentiments. And in this case 
the interaction, being of the nature of direct competition 
and conflict, is of the kind most favourable to the develop- 
ment of the collective mind. It accentuates the self- 
consciousness of the whole; that is to say, it defines more 
clearly in the mind of each individual the whole of which he 
is a part, his position in, his organic connection with, and 
his dependence upon, the whole; with each succeeding 
stage of the conflict he conceives the whole more clearly, 
obtains a fuller knowledge of the capacities and weaknesses 
of the whole and its parts. Each soldier learns, too, some- 
thing of the character of the opposing army; and, in the 
light of this knowledge, his conception of his own army 
becomes better defined and richer in meaning. In short, 
through interaction with the opposing army, the army as a 
whole becomes more clearly reflected in the mind of each 
of its members, its self-consciousness is clarified and en- 
riched. In a similar way, intercoiu'se and rivalry between 
the various regiments greatly promotes the growth of the 
self-knowledge and self -sentiment of each of these lesser 
groups. A standing army inevitably possesses a wealth 
of traditions, habits and customs, over and above its 
formal organisation, and these play an important part in 
promoting the smooth working of the whole organism; the 
lack of these is one of the chief difficulties in the way of the 
creation of a new army, as was vividly illustrated in the 
making of the "Kitchener army" during the Great War. 
The customs of the various officers' messes were but a 
small part of this mass of custom which does so much to 
bind the whole army together. 



The Highly Organised Group 73 

An army obviously possesses organisation, generally in 
a very high degree. The formal continuity of its existence 
enables the organisation impressed upon it by external 
authority to acquire all the strength that custom alone can 
give; while its material continuity enables its organisation 
to generate, in the individual soldiers, habits through 
which the inferior members are raised, as regards the moral 
qualities required for efficiency in the field, towards the 
level of the best. 

The organisation of the whole army has two aspects and 
two main functions; the one is executive, the securing of 
the co-ordination of action of the parts in the carrying out 
of the common plan ; the other is recipient and deliberative, 
the co-ordination of the data supplied by the parts through 
deliberation upon which the choice of means is arrived at. 
Deliberation and choice of means are carried out by the 
commander-in-chief and his staff, the persons who have 
shown themselves best able to execute this part of the 
army's task. It is important to note that, in the case of 
such an army as we are considering, the private soldier in 
the ranks remains a free agent performing truly volitional 
actions; that he in no sense becomes a mechanical agent 
or one acting through enforced or habitual obedience 
merely. He wills the common end ; and, believing that the 
choice of means to that end is best effected by the appro- 
priate part of the whole organisation, he accepts the 
means chosen, makes of them his proximate end, and wills 
them. 

This is the essential character of the effective organisa- 
tion of any human group; it secures that while the com- 
mon end of collective action is willed by all, the choice of 
means is left to those best qualified and in the best position 
for deliberation and choice; and it secures that co-ordina- 
tion of the voluntary actions of the parts which brings 
about the common end by the means so chosen. In this 



74 Principles of Collective Psychology 



way the collective acti6ns of the well-organised group 
instead of being, like those of the simple crowd, merely 
impulsive or instinctive actions, implying a degree of in 
telligence and of morality far inferior to that of the average 
individual of the crowd, become truly volitional actions 
expressive of a degree of intelligence and morality much 
higher than that of the average member of the group : i. e., 
the whole is raised above the level of its average member; 
and even, by reason of exaltation of emotion and organised 
co-operation in deliberation, above that of its highest 
members. 

Here we must consider a little more fully the nature of 
the collective or general will, a subject that has figured 
largely in the discussions of political philosophers on the 
nature of the State. Rousseau wrote — "There is often a 
great difference between the will of all and the general will; 
the latter looks only to the common interest; the former 
looks to private interest, and is nothing but a series of 
individual wills; but take away from these same wills the 
plus and minus that cancel one another and there remains, 
as the sum of the differences, the general will." "Sover- 
eignty is only the exercise of the general will." By this 
he seems to mean that a certain number of men will the 
general good, while many will only their private goods 
and that while the latter neutralize one another, as regards 
their effects on the general interest, the former co-operate 
and so form an effective force to promote the general 
good. This doctrine was an approximation towards the 
truth, though like all Rousseau's social speculations, his 
handling of it was vitiated by his false psychology, 
which set out from the fiction of man as an independ- 
ent purely self-contained and self-determining absolute 
individual. Later writers do not seem to have improved 
upon Rousseau's doctrine of the general will to any great 
extent. 



1 



The Highly Organised Group 75 

The problem of the general will, like all problems of 
collective psychology, becomes extremely complex when 
we consider the life of nations; and it is, therefore, im- 
portant to make ourselves clear as to the nature of collect- 
ive volition by consideration of the relatively simple case 
of a patriot army. It is of course impossible to arrive at a 
clear notion of collective volition, until individual volition 
has been clearly defined and the nature of the distinction 
between it, on the one hand, and mere impulsive action, 
desire, and simple conflict of desires, on the other hand, has 
been made clear. The lack of such clear notions and ade- 
quate definitions has rendered much of the discussion of 
this topic by political philosophers sterile and obscure. 
In the light of the conclusions reached in my chapter on 
individual volition, ' the question of the nature of collect- 
ive volition presents little difficulty. It was found that 
volition may be defined and adequately marked off from 
the simpler modes of conation by saying that it is the 
re-inforcement of any impulse or conation by one excited 
within the system of the self -regarding sentiment. And in 
an earlier chapter "^ it was shown how the self -regarding 
sentiment may become extended to other objects than the 
individual self, to all objects with which the self identifies 
itself, which are regarded as belonging to the self or as part 
of the wider self. This extension depends largely on the 
fact that others identify us with such an object, so that we 
feel ourselves to be an object of all the regards and atti- 
tudes and actions of others directed towards that object, 
and are emotionally affected by them in the same ways 
that we are affected by similar regards, attitudes, and 
actions directed towards us individually. It was shown 
also that such a sentiment may become wider and emotion- 
ally richer than the purely self-regarding sentiment, 
through fusing with a sentiment of love for the object that 

» Social Psychology, Chapter IX. » Op. ciL, Chapter VII. 



76 Principles of Collective Psychology 



has grown up independently. These facts were illustrated 
by consideration of the parental sentiment for the chiild, 
which, it was said, has commonly this twofold character 
and source, being formed by the compounding of the self- 
regarding sentiment with the sentiment of love of which 
the dominant disposition is that of the tender or protect- 
ive instinct. 

In a similar way a similarly complex sentiment may be- 
come organised about the idea of one's family, or of any 
still larger group having continuity of existence of which 
one becomes a member. In the case of the patriot's senti- 
ment for his country or nation, the self-regarding senti- 
ment and the sentiment of love may be from the first 
combined in the patriotic sentiment ; since he knows him- 
self to be a part of the whole from the time that an idea 
of the whole first takes shape in his mind. 

In this respect the case of the soldier in a patriot army 
is relatively simple. As a boy he may have acquired a 
sentiment of loving admiration for the army; and, w^hen he 
becomes a member of it, the dispositions that enter into 
the constitution of his self-regarding sentiment become 
incorporated with this previously existing sentiment, so 
that the reputation of the army becomes as important to 
him as his own ; praise and approval of it become for him 
objects of desire and sources of elation; disapproval and 
blame of it, or the prospect of them, affect him as pain- 
fiilly as if directed to himself individually, fill him with 
shame and mortification. 

A similar complex sentiment, the sentiment of patriot- 
ism, becomes organised about the idea of his country as a 
whole; and, when war breaks out and the army is pitted 
against that of another nation, while the eyes of the whole 
world are tiurned upon it, it becomes the representative of 
the nation and the special object of the patriotic sentiment 
which thus adds its strength to that of the more special 



1 



J 



The Highly Organised Group 77 

sentiment of the soldier for the army. ' When, then, the 
patriot army takes the field, it is capable of collective 
volition in virtue of the existence of this sentiment in the 
minds of all its members. The soldiers of a purely mer- 
cenary army are moved by the desire of individual glory, 
of increased pay, of loot, by the habit of obedience and 
collective movement acquired by prolonged drilling, by 
the pugnacious impulse, by the desire of self-preservation; 
and they may be led on to greater exertions by the influ- 
ence of an admired captain. But such an army is incapa- 
ble of collective volition, because no sentiment for the 
army as a whole is common to all its members. The 
soldiers of the patriot army on the other hand may act 
from all the individual motives enumerated above ; but all 
alike are capable also of being stirred by a common motive, 
a desire excited within the collective self-regarding senti- 
ment, the common sentiment for the army; and this, 
adding itself to whatever individual motives are operative, 
converts their desires into collective resolutions and renders 
their actions the expressions of a collective volition. 

Each soldier of the mercenary army may desire that his 
side shall win the battle and may resolve that he will do his 
best to bring victory to his side, and he may perform many 
truly volitional actions ; and, in so far as the actions of the 
army express these individual volitions towards a common 
result, they are the expressions of the ''will of all," but not 
of the collective will; because these volitions, though they 
are directed to the one common end, spring from diverse 
motives and are individual volitions. 

The essence of collective volition is, then, not merely the 

^ One great difference between the professional army such as that of 
England and the citizen armies of Europe, consists in the fact that the 
special sentiment for the army is stronger in the former; the more general 
patriotic sentiment, in the rank and file of the latter; though in the regular 
officers of the continental army the sentiment for the army itself is no doubt 
usually the stronger. 



78 Principles of Collective Psychology 

direction of the wills of all to the same end, but the motiva- 
tion of the wills of all members of a group by impulses 
awakened within the common sentiment for the whole of 
which they are the parts. It is the extension of the self- 
regarding sentiment of each member of the group to the 
group as a whole that binds the group together and renders 
it a collective individual capable of collective volition. 

The facts may be illustrated more concretely by taking a 
still simpler example of collective volition. Consider the 
case of a regiment in battle commanded to occupy a cer- 
tain hilltop in face of fierce opposition! If the regiment 
is one to which the self-regarding sentiment of each mem- 
ber has become extended, the soldiers may be animated 
individually by the pugnacious impulse and by the desire 
of individual glory, but they are moved also by the com- 
mon desire to show what the regiment can do, to sustain 
its glorious reputation; they resolve that we, the regiment, 
will accomplish this feat. As they charge up the hill, the 
hail of bullets decimates their ranks and they waver, the 
impulse of fear checking their onward rush; if then their 
officer appeals to the common sentiment, each man feels 
the answering impulse; and this is strengthened by the 
cheer which shows him that the same impulse rises in all his 
comrades; and so this impulse, awakened within the col- 
lective self -regarding sentiment and strengthened by sym- 
pathetic induction from all to each, comes to the support 
of the pugnacious impiilse or whatever other motives 
sustain each man, enables these to triumph over the im- 
pulse to flight, and sweeps them all on to gain their object 
by truly collective volitional effort. If, on the other hand, 
the men of the regiment have no such common sentiment, 
then, when the advancing line wavers, the onward impul- 
sion checked by the impulse of retreat, there is no possibil- 
ity of arousing a collective volition; the regiment, which 
from the first was a crowd organised only by external 



The Highly Organised Group 79 

authority and the habits created by it, acts as a crowd and 
yields to the rising impulse of the emotion of fear, which, 
becoming intensified by induction from man to man, rises 
to a panic; and the regiment is routed. 

We may distinguish, then, five modes of conation which 
will carry all the members of a group towards a common 
object, five levels of collective action. 

Let the group be a body of men on a road leading across 
a wilderness to a certain walled city. A sudden threat of 
danger from a band of robbers or from wild beasts may 
send them all flying in panic towards the city gate. That 
is a piurely impulsive collective action. It is not merely a 
sum of individual actions, because the fear and, therefore, 
the impulse to flight of each man is intensified by the 
influence of his fellows. 

Secondly, let them be a band of pilgrims, fortuitously 
congregated, each of whom has resolved to reach the city 
for his own private purposes. The whole body moves on 
steadily, each perhaps aided in maintaining his resolution 
in face of difliculties by the presence of the rest and the 
spectacle of their resolute efforts. Here there is a certain 
collectivity of action, the individual wills are strengthened 
by the community of purpose. But the arrival of the 
band is not due to collective volition; nor can it properly 
be said to be due to the will of all; for each member cares 
nothing for the arrival of the band as a whole; he desires 
and wills only his own arrival. 

Thirdly, let each member of the band be aware that, at 
any point of the road, robbers may oppose the passage of 
any individual or of any company not sufficiently strong 
to force its way through. Each member will then desire 
that the whole band shall cohere and shall reach the city, 
and the actions of the group will display a higher degree of 
co-operation and collective efficiency than in the former 
cases ; but the successful passage of the band will be desired 



8o Principles of Collective Psychology 

by each member simply in order that his own safe arrival 
may be secured. There is direction of all wills towards 
the production of the one result, the success of the whole 
band; but this is not truly collective volition because the 
motives are private and individual and diverse. 

Fourthly, let the band be an army of crusaders, a mot- 
ley throng of heterogeneous elements of various nationali- 
ties, united by one common piu-pose, the capture of the 
city, but having no sentiment for the army. In this case 
all members not only will the same collective action and 
desire the same end of that action, but they have similar 
motives arising from their sentiment for the city or that 
which it contains. Still their combined actions are not 
the issue of a collective volition in the full and proper sense 
of the words, but of a coincidental conjunction of individ- 
ual volitions. They might perhaps be said to be the ex- 
pression of the general will; and by giving that meaning 
to the term ''general will," while reserving the expression 
collective will or volition for the type of case illustrated 
by our next instance, we may usefully differentiate the 
two expressions. 

Lastly, let the band approaching the city be an army of 
crusaders of one nationality, and let us suppose that this 
army has enjoyed a considerable continuity of existence 
and that in the mind of each member the self-regarding 
sentiment has become extended to the army as a whole, so 
that, as we say, each one identifies himself with it and 
prizes its reputation and desires its success as an end in 
itself. Such a sentiment would be greatly developed and 
strengthened by rivalry in deeds of arms with a second 
crusading army. Each member of this army would have 
the same motives for capttiring the city as those of the 
army of our last instance; but, in addition to these motives, 
there would be awakened within the extended self -regard- 
ing sentiment of each man an impulse to assert the power, 



The Highly Organised Group 8l 

to sustain the glory of the army; and this, adding its force 
to those other motives, would enable them to triumph over 
all conflicting tendencies and render the resolution of the 
army to capture the city a true collective volition ; so that 
the army might properly be said to possess and to exercise 
a general or collective will. 

This distinction between the will of all and the collec- 
tive will, which we have considered at some length, may 
seem to be of slight importance in the instances chosen. 
But it becomes of the greatest importance when we have to 
consider the life of a nation or other enduring community. 
The power of truly collective volition is no small advan- 
tage to any body of fighting men and receives practical 
recognition from experienced captains. 

The importance of these different types of volition was 
abundantly illustrated by the incidents of the Boer war 
and of the Russo-Japanese war. That the success of its 
undertaking shall be strongly willed by all is perhaps the 
most important factor contributing to the success of an 
army ; and if also the army exercises a true collective voli- 
tion, in the sense defined above, it becomes irresistible. 
Though it is questionable whether the Boer armies can be 
said to have exercised a collective volition, it is at least 
certain that individually the Boers strongly willed their 
common end, the defeat of the British. On the other hand 
the British armies were defective in these respects. The 
motives of those who fought in the British armies against 
the Boers were very diverse. The pay of the regulars, the 
five shillings a day of the volunteers, the desire to live for a 
time an adventurous exciting life, the desire to get home 
again on the sick-list as soon as possible, the desire for 
personal distinction; all these and other motives were in 
many minds mixed in various proportions with the desire 
to assert the supremacy of the British rule and support 
the honour of the flag. This difference between the Boer 



82 Principles of Collective Psychology 

and British armies was undoubtedly a main cause of many 
of the surprising successes of the former. In the Russo- 
Japanese war the opposed armies probably differed even 
more widely in this respect. The Japanese soldiers not 
only willed intensely the common end, but their armies 
would appear to have exercised truly collective volition. 
Many of the several regiments also, being recruited on the 
territorial system, were animated by collective sentiments 
rooted in local patriotism. The Russian armies on the 
other hand were largely composed of peasants drawn from 
widely separated regions of the Russian empire, knowing 
little or nothing of the grounds of quarrel or of the ends to 
be achieved by their efforts, caring nothing individually for 
those ends, and having but little patriotic sentiment and 
still less sentiment for the army. 

It would, then, be a grave mistake to infer from the 
coiu'se of events in these two wars that the British soldier 
was individually inferior to the Boer, or the Russian to the 
Japanese; in both cases the principal psychological con- 
dition of successful collective action — namely, a common 
end intensely desired and strongly willed, individually or 
collectively — was present in high degree on the one side, 
because the preservation of the national existence was the 
end in view ; while it was lacking or comparatively deficient 
on the other side. As Sir Ian Hamilton, a close observer 
of both these wars, has said--** the army that will not 
surrender under any circumstances will always vanquish 
the army whose units are prepared to do so under sufficient 
pressure." 

The same considerations afford an explanation of a 
peculiarity of Russian armies which has often been noted 
in previous wars, and which was very conspicuous in the 
late wars ; namely, their weakness in attack and their great 
strength when on the defensive. For, in attacking, a 
Russian army is in the main merely obeying the will of the 



The Highly Organised Group 83 

commander-in-chief in virtue of custom, habit, and a form 
of strong collective suggestion; but in retreat and on the 
defensive, each man's action becomes truly volitional, all 
are animated by a common purpose, and all will the same 
end, the safety of the whole with which that of each 
member is bound up. 

The psychology of a patriot army is peculiarly simplified 
as compared with that of most other large himian groups, 
by two conditions; on the one hand, the restriction of the 
intellectual processes, by which the large means for the 
pursuit of the common end are chosen, to one or a few 
minds only; on the other hand, the definiteness and single- 
ness of its purpose and the presence of this clear and strong 
purpose in the minds of all. 

Other groups that enjoy in some degree the latter con- 
dition of simplicity of collective mental life are associations 
voluntarily formed and organised for the attainment of 
some single well-defined end. In them the former con- 
dition is generally completely lacking and the deliberative 
processes, by which their means are chosen, are apt to be 
very complex and ineffective, owing to lack of customary 
organisation. Such associations illustrate more clearly 
than any other groups the part played by the idea of the 
whole in the minds of the individuals in constituting and 
maintaining the whole. A desire or purpose being present 
in many minds, the idea of the association arises in some 
one or more of them, and, being communicated to others, 
becomes the immediate instrument through which the 
association is called into being; and only so long as this 
idea of the whole as an instrument for attaining the com- 
mon end persists in the minds of the individuals does the 
association continue to exist. In this respect such an 
association is at the opposite end of the scale from the 
fortuitous crowd, which owes its existence to the accidents 
of time and place merely. Human groups of other kinds 



84 Principles of Collective Psychology 

owe their existence in various proportions to these two 
conditions; such groups, for example, as are constituted 
by the members of a church, of a university or a school, of 
a profession or a township. Others, such as nations, owe 
their inception to the accidents of time and place, to 
physical boundaries and climatic conditions; and, in the 
course of their evolution, become more and more de- 
pendent for their existence on the idea of the whole 
and the sentiment organised about it in the minds of 
their members; and they may, like the Jewish people, 
arrive in the course of time at complete dependence on 
the latter condition. 

The life of an army illustrates better than that of any 
other group the influence of leadership. That great 
strategists and skilful tacticians perform intellectual ser- 
vices of immeastirable importance for the common end of 
the army goes without saying. But the moral influence 
of leadership is more subtle in its workings, and is perhaps 
less generally recognised in all its complexity and scope. 
It is well known that such commanders as Napoleon in- 
spired unlimited confidence and enthusiasm in the veteran 
armies that had made many campaigns under their leader- 
ship. Yet in the Great War, in which the British armies 
were, in its later stages, composed so largely of new re- 
cruits, the same influence was perceptible. Both the 
British and the French armies were very fortunate in 
having in supreme command men in whom the common 
soldier felt confldence. The solidity, the justice, the calm 
resolution of Marshal Joffre were felt throughout the 
French army in the early days of the war to be the one 
certain and fixed point in a crumbling universe. ''II est 
solid, le Pere Joffre" was repeated by thousands who, 
remembering the disaster of 1870, were inclined to suspect 
treachery and weakness on every hand. And the genius of 
Marshal Foch and of other brilliant generals was a main 



I 



The Highly Organised Group 85 

source of the astonishing dogged resolution with which the 
French armies, in spite of their terrible losses, sustained 
the prolonged agony. The British army also was for- 
tunate in having in Field-Marshal Haig a man at its head 
who was felt to be above all things resolute and calm and 
just; and, when the British armies in France were placed 
under the supreme control of Foch, it was generally felt 
throughout the ranks that this would not only give 
unity of control and purpose, but also supply that touch 
of genius which perhaps had been lacking in British 
strategy. 

But it was not only the supreme command that exer- 
cised this influence over the minds of all ranks. At every 
level, confidence in the leadership was of supreme import- 
ance. The character and talents of each general and 
colonel, of each captain, lieutenant, sergeant, and corporal, 
made themselves felt by all under their control; felt not 
only individually but corporately and collectively. The 
whole area under the command of any particular general 
might be seen to reflect and to express in some degree his 
attributes. The reputations of the higher oflicers filtered 
down through the ranks in an astonishingly rapid and 
accurate manner; perhaps owing largely to the fact that 
these armies, in a degree unknown before, were composed 
of men accustomed to read and to think and to discuss and 
criticise the conduct of affairs. If the German higher 
command had been exercised from the first by a man who 
inspired the just confidence that was felt in the old Field- 
Marshal v. Moltke by the Prussian armies of 1870, it 
is probable that the issue of the Great War would have 
been fatally different. 

The moral effects of good leadership are, perhaps, of 
more importance to an army than its intellectual qualities, 
especially in a prolonged struggle; and these work through- 
out the mass of men by subtle processes of suggestion and 



86 Principles of Collective Psychology 

emotional contagion rather than by any process of purely 
intellectual appreciation. And the whole organisation of 
any wisely directed army is designed to render as effective 
as possible these processes by which the influence of 
leaders is diffused through the whole. 



CHAPTER IV 
The Group Spirit 

IN considering the mental life of a patriot army, as the 
type of a highly organised group, we saw that group 
self-consciousness is a factor of very great importance 
— that it is a principal condition of the elevation of its 
collective mental life and behaviour above the level of the 
merely impulsive violence and unreasoning fickleness of 
the mob. 

This self-consciousness of the group is the essential 
condition of all higher group life; we must therefore study 
it more nearly as it is manifested in groups of various types. 
It is unfortunate that our language has no word that ac- 
curately translates the French expression, esprit de corps; 
for this conveys exactly the conception that we are exam- 
ining. I propose to use the term group spirit as the 
equivalent of the French expression, the frequent use of 
which in English speech and writing sufficiently justifies 
the attempt to specialise this compound word for psy- 
chological purposes. 

We have seen that, in virtue of the sentiment developed 
about the idea of the army, all its members exhibit group 
loyalty; it is only as the sentiment develops about the idea 
that this idea of the whole, present to the mind of each 
member, becomes a power which can hold the whole group 
together, in spite of all physical and moral difficulties. 
We see this if we reflect how armies of mercenaries, in 
which this collective sentiment is lacking or rudimentary 

87 



88 Principles of Collective Psychology 

only, are apt to dissolve and fade away by desertion as 
soon as serious difficulties are encountered. 

The importance of the collective idea and sentiment ap- 
pears still more clearly, when we reflect on the type of 
army which has generally proved the most efficient of all 
— namely, an army of volunteers banded together to 
achieve some particular end. Such an army (for example 
the army of Garibaldi) owes its existence to the operation 
of this idea in the minds of all. The idea of the army is 
formed in the mind perhaps of one only (Garibaldi); he 
communicates it to others, who accept it as a means to the 
end desired by all of them individually. The idea of the 
whole thus operates to create the group, to bring it into 
existence; and then, as the idea is realised, it becomes more 
definite, of richer and more exact meaning; the collective 
sentiment grows up about it, and habit and formal organ- 
isation begin to aid in holding the group together; yet 
still the idea of the whole remains constitutive of the whole. 

Any group that owes its creation and its continued 
existence to the collective idea may be regarded from the 
psychological standpoint as of the highest type; while a 
fortuitously gathered crowd that owes its existence to 
accidents of time and place and has the barest minimum 
of group self -consciousness is of the lowest type. Every 
other form of association or of human group may be 
regarded as occupying a position in a scale between these 
extreme types; according to the relative predominance of 
the mental or the physical conditions of its origin and 
continuance, that is to say, according to the degree in 
which its existence is teleologically or mechanically 
determined. 

The group spirit, the idea of the group with the senti- 
ment of devotion to the group developed in the minds of 
all its members, not only serves as a bond that holds the 
group together or even creates it, but, as we saw in the 



The Group Spirit 89 

case of the patriot army, it renders possible truly collective 
volition ; this in turn renders the actions of the group much 
more resolute and effective than they could be, so long as 
its actions proceed merely from the presence of an impulse 
common to all members, or from the strictly individual 
volitions of all, even though these be directed to one 
common end. 

Again, the group spirit plays an important part in rais- 
ing the intellectual level of the group ; for it leads each 
member deliberately to subordinate his own judgment and 
opinion to that of the whole; and, in any properly or- 
ganised group, this collective opinion will be superior to 
that of the average individual, because in its formation 
the best minds, acting upon the fullest knowledge to the 
gathering of which all may contribute, will be of predom- 
inant influence. Each member, then, willing the common 
end, accepts the means chosen by the organised collective 
deliberation, and, in executing the actions prescribed for 
him, makes them his own immediate ends and truly wills 
them for the sake of the whole, not executing them in the 
spirit of merely mechanical unintelligent obedience or even 
of reluctance. 

In a similar way the group spirit aids in raising the moral 
level of an army. The organised whole embodies certain 
traditional sentiments, especially sentiments of admira- 
tion for certain moral qualities, courage, endiirance, 
trustworthiness, and cheerful obedience; and these senti- 
ments, permeating the whole, are impressed upon every 
member, especially new members, by way of mass sugges- 
tion and S3^mpathetic contagion; every new recruit finds 
that his comrades accept without question these tradi- 
tional moral sentiments and confidently express moral 
judgments upon conduct and character in accordance with 
them, and that they also display the corresponding emo- 
tional reactions towards acts; that is to say, they express 



90 Principles of Collective Psychology 

in verbal judgments and in emotional reactions their scorn 
for treachery or cowardice, their admiration for coura- 
geous self-sacrifice and devotion to duty. The recruit 
quickly shares by contagion these moral emotions and 
soon finds his judgment determined to share these opin- 
ions by the weight of mass suggestion; for these moral 
propositions come to him with all the irresistible force of 
opinion held by the group and expressed by its unanimous 
voice; and this force is not merely the force derived from 
numbers, but is also the force of the prestige accumulated 
by the whole group, the prestige of old and well-tried 
tradition, the prestige of age; and the more fully the con- 
sciousness of the whole group is present to the mind of 
each member, the more effectively will the whole, impress 
its moral precepts upon each. .k.j; <Kt ^^rrtia'^acm 

And the organisation of the army renders it possible for 
the leaders to influence and to mould the form of these 
moral opinions and sentiments. Thus Lord Kitchener, 
by issuing his exhortation to the British Army on its 
departure to France, did undoubtedly exert a considerable 
influence towards raising the moral level of the whole force, 
because he strengthened the influence of those who were 
already of his way of thinking against the influence of 
those whose sentiments and habits and opinions made in 
the opposite direction. His great prestige, which was of a 
double kind, both personal and due to his high office, en- 
abled him to do this. In the same way, every officer in a 
less degree can do something to raise the moral level of the 
men under his command. Thus, then, the organisation 
of the whole group, with its hierarchy of offices which 
confer prestige, gives those who hold these higher offices 
the opportunity to raise the moral level of all members. 

Of course, if those who occupy these positions of pres- 
tige feel no responsibility of this sort and make no effort 
to exert such influence, but rather aim at striking terror in 



The Group Spirit 91 

the foe at all costs, if they countenance acts of savagery- 
such as the destruction of cities, looting, and rapine, if they 
publicly instruct their soldiers to behave as Huns or 
savages; then the organisation of the army works in the 
opposite way- — namely, to degrade all members below their 
normal individual level, rather than to raise them above 
it; and then we hear of acts of brutality on the part of the 
rank and file which are almost incredible. 

But the main point to be insisted on here is that the 
raising of the moral level is not effected only by example, 
suggestion, and emotional contagion, spreading from those 
in the positions of prestige; that, where the group spirit 
exists, those enjoying prestige can, if they wish, greatly 
promote the end of raising the moral tone of the whole by 
appealing to that group spirit; as when Lord Kitchener 
asked the men to obey his injunctions for the sake of the 
honour of the British army. 

And the group spirit not only yields this direct response 
to moral exhortation; it operates in another no less import- 
ant manner. Each member of a group pervaded by the 
collective sentiment, such as a well-organised army of high 
traditions, becomes in a special sense his brother's keeper. 
Each feels an interest in the conduct of every other mem- 
ber, because the conduct of each affects the reputation of 
the whole; each man, therefore, punishes bad conduct of 
any fellow-soldier by scorn and by withdrawal of sym- 
pathy and companionship; and each one rewards with 
praise and admiration the conduct that conforms to the 
standards demanded and admired. And so each member 
acts always under the jealous eyes of all his fellows, under 
the threat of general disapprobation, contempt, and moral 
isolation for bad conduct; under the promise of general 
approval and admiration for any act of special excellence. 

The development of the group spirit, with the appro- 
priate sentiment of attachment or devotion to the whole 



92 Principles of Collective Psychology 

and therefore also to its parts, is the essence of the higher 
form of military discipline. There is a lower form of dis- 
cipline which aims only at rendering each man perfectly 
subservient to his officers and trained to respond promptly 
and invariably, in precise, semi-mechanical, habitual fash- 
ion, to every word of command. But even the drill and 
the system of penalties and minute supervision, which are 
the means chosen to bring about this result, cannot fail 
to achieve certain effects on a higher moral and intellec- 
tual level than the mere formation of bodily habits of 
response. By rendering each soldier apt and exact in his 
response to commands, they enable each one to foresee 
the actions of his fellows in all ordinary circumstances, and 
therefore to rely upon that co-operation towards the 
common end, be it merely a turning movement on the 
drill ground or the winning of a battle, which is the essen- 
tial aim and justification of all group life. 

The group spirit, involving knowledge of the group as 
such, some idea of the group, and some sentiment of de- 
votion or attachment to the group, is then the essential 
condition of all developed collective life, and of all effective 
collective action ; but it is by no means confined to highly 
developed human associations of a voluntary kind. 

Whether the group spirit is possessed in any degree by 
animal societies is a very difficult question. We certainly 
do not need to postulate it in order to account for the 
existence of more or less enduring associations of animals; 
jus^ as we do not need to postulate it to account for the 
coming together of any fortuitous human mob. Even in 
such animal societies as those of the ants and bees, its 
presence, though often asserted, seems to be highly ques- 
tionable. When we observe the division of labour that 
characterises the hive, how some bees ventilate, some build 
the comb, some feed the larvae and so on; and especially 
when we hear that the departure of a. swarm from the hive 



The Group Spirit 93 

is preceded by the explorations of a small number which 
seek a suitable place for the new home of the swarm and 
then guide it to the chosen spot, it seems difficult to deny- 
that some idea of the community and its needs is present to 
the minds of its members. But we know so little as yet 
of the limits of purely instinctive behaviour (and by that 
I mean immediate reactions upon sense-perceptions deter- 
mined by the innate constitution) that it would be rash 
to make any such inference. The same may be said of 
associations of birds or mammals, in which division of 
labour is frequently displayed; when, for example, it is 
found that one or more sentinels constantly keep watch 
while a flock or herd feeds or rests, as is reported of many 
gregarious species. 

But, however it may be with animal societies, we may 
confidently assert that the group spirit has played an im- 
portant part in the lives of all enduring human groups, 
from the most primitive ages onwards. 

It has even been maintained with some plausibility 
that group self -consciousness preceded individual self -con- 
sciousness in the course of the evolution of the human 
mind. That again is, it seems to me, a proposition which 
cannot be substantiated. But it is, I think, true to say 
that the two kinds of self-consciousness must have been 
achieved by parallel processes, which constantly reacted 
upon one another in reciprocal promotion. 

In the lives of the humblest savages the group spirit 
plays an immensely important part. It is the rule that a 
savage is born into a small closed community. Such a 
community generally has its own locality within which it 
remains, even if nomadic; and, if settled, it wholly lives in a 
village, widely separated in space from all others. In this 
small community the child grows up, becoming more or less 
intimately acquainted with every member of it, and hav- 
ing practically no intercourse with any other persons. 



94 Principles of Collective Psychology 

Throughout his childhood he learns its laws and traditions, 
becomes acutely aware of its public opinion, and finds his 
welfare absolutely bound up with that of the village com- 
munity. He cannot leave it if he would ; the only alterna- 
tive open to him is to become an outcast, as which he 
would very soon succumb in the struggle for life. There 
is nothing comparable with this in oiu* complex civilised 
societies. The nearest parallel to it is the case of the 
young child growing up in a pectiliarly secluded family 
isolated in the depths of the country. 

This restriction of the intercoiurse of the young savage 
to the members of his own small society and his absolute 
dependence upon it for all that makes his survival possible 
would in themselves suffice to develop his group-conscious- 
ness in a high degree. But two other conditions, well- 
nigh universal in savage life, tend strongly towards the 
same result. 

When the young savage begins to come into contact with 
persons other than those of his own group, he learns to 
know them, not as individuals, John Smith or Tom Brown, 
but as men of such or such a group ; and he himself is 
known to them as a man of his group, as representing his 
group, his village community, tribe, or what not; and he 
displays usually some mark or marks of his group, either 
in dress or ornament or speech. 

The other great condition of the development of the I 
group spirit in primitive societies is the general recognition 
of communal responsibility. This no doubt is largely the 
result of the two conditions previously mentioned, espe- 
cially of the recognition of an individual by members of 
other groups as merely a representative of his group, 
rather than as an individual, and of the fact that his deeds, 
or those of any one of his fellows, determine the attitudes 
of other groups towards his group as a whole. But the 
influence of the principle of communal responsibility, 



The Group Spirit 95 

thus established, becomes immensely strengthened by its 
recognition in a number of superstitious and religious 
observances. The savage lives, generally speaking, bound 
hand and foot by tabus and precise prescriptions of be- 
haviour for all ordinary situations ; and the breach of any 
one of these by any member of the community is held to 
bringdown misfortune or punishment on the whole group; 
so far is this principle carried, that the breach of custom by 
some individual is confidently inferred from the incidence 
of any communal misfortune.' 

The recognition of communal responsibility is the great 
conservator of savage society and customary law, the very- 
root and stem of all savage morality; it is the effective 
moral sanction without which the superstitious and re- 
ligious sanctions would be of little effect. By its means, 
the idea of the community is constantly obtruded on the 
consciousness of the individual. Through it he is con- 
stantly led, or forced, to control his individualistic im- 
pulses and to undertake action with regard to the welfare 
of the group rather than to his own private interest. 
Through it the tendency of each to identify himself and 
each of his fellows with the whole group is constantly 
fostered; because it identifies their interests. 

We may then say that, just as the direct induction of 
emotion and impulse by sense-perception of their bodily 
expressions is the cement of animal societies, so group self- 
consciousness is the cement and harmonising principle of 
primitive human societies. 

And the group spirit is not only highly effective in pro- 
moting the life and welfare of the group; it is also the 
source of peculiar satisfactions. The individual revels in 
his group-consciousness; hence the principle is apt to run 
riot in savage societies, and we find that in very many 

» Cp. The Pagan Tribes oj Borneo, by Ch. Hose and W. McDougall, Lon- 
don, 1912. 



96 Principles of Collective Psychology 

parts of the world a great variety of complex forms of 
association is maintained, beside the primary and fimda- 
mental form of association of the village community or 
nomadic band (the kinship or subsistence group), ap- 
parently for no other reason than the attainment and 
intensification of the satisfactions of the group spirit. 
Hence, among peoples so low in the scale of savagery as 
the Australians, we find a most complex system of group- 
ing cutting across the subsistence grouping; hence totem 
clans and phratries, exogamous groups, secret societies, 
initiation ceremonies. 

I lay stress on the satisfaction which group self-con- 
sciousness brings as a condition or cause of these complexi- 
ties of savage society, because, I think, it has been unduly 
neglected as a socialising factor and a determinant of the 
forms of association. If we ask — What are the sources 
of this satisfaction? — we may find two answers. First, 
the consciousness of the group and of oneself as a member 
of it brings a sense of power and security, an assurance of 
sympathy and co-operation, a moral and physical support 
without which man can hardly face the world. In a 
thousand situations it is a source of settled opinions and 
of definite guidance of conduct which obviates the most I 
uncomfortable and difficult necessity of exerting inde- 
pendent judgment and making up one's own mind. And 
in many such situations, not only does the savage find a I 
definite code prescribed for his guidance, but he shares the 
collective emotion and feels the collective impulse that 
carries him on to action without hesitation or timidity. 

Secondly, we may, I think, go back to a very funda- 
mental principle of instinctive life, the principle, namely, 
that, in gregarious animals, the satisfaction of the grega- 
rious impulse is greater or more complete the more nearly 
alike are the individuals congregated together. This 
seems to be true of the animals, but it is true in a higher 



The Group Spirit 97 

degree of man ; and, in proportion as his mind becomes more 
specialised and refined, the more exacting is he in this 
respect. To the uncultivated any society is better than 
none; but in the cultivated classes we become extraor- 
dinarily exacting ; we find the gregarious satisfaction in our 
own peculiar set only — a process carried furthest, perhaps, 
in university circles. In savage life this shows itself in 
practices which accentuate the likeness of members of a 
group and mark it off more distinctly from other groups — 
for example, totems, peculiarities of dress, ornaments and 
ceremonies; things which are closely paralleled by the 
clubs, blazers, colours, cries, and so forth of our under- 
graduate communities. 

The life of the savage, then, is in general dominated by 
that of the group; and this domination is not effected by 
physical force or compulsion (save in exceptional in- 
stances) but by the group spirit which is inevitably de- 
veloped in the mind of the savage child by the material 
circimistances of his life and by the traditions, especially 
the superstitious and religious traditions, of his commu- 
nity. Such group self -consciousness is the principal moral- 
ising influence, and to this influence is due in the main the 
fact that savages conform so strictly to their accepted 
moral codes. 

Group self -consciousness in savage communities brings 
then, I suggest, two great advantages which account for 
the spontaneous development and persistence among so 
many savage peoples of what, from a narrowly utilitarian 
point of view, might seem to be an excess of group or- 
ganisation, such as the totemic systems of the Australians 
and of the American Indians ; — namely, firstly, the moral- 
ising influences of the group spirit; secondly, the satis- 
factions or enjoyments immediately accruing to every 
participant in active group life. 

And these two advantages, being in some degree appre- 



98 Principles of Collective Psychology 

dated, lead to a deliberate cultivation of group life for the 
securing of them in higher measure. The cultivation of 
group life shows itself in the many varieties of grouping on 
a purely artificial basis and in the practice of rites and 
ceremonies, especially dances, often accompanied by song 
and other music. There is nothing that so intensifies 
group-consciousness, at the cost of consciousness of in- 
dividuality, as ceremonial dancing and singing; especially 
when the dance consists of a series of extravagant bizarre 
movements, executed by every member of the group in 
unison, the series of movements being at the same time 
peculiar to the particular group that practises them and 
symbolical of the peculiar functions or properties claimed 
by the group. Many savage dances have these characters 
in perfection ; as, for example, those of the Miirray island- 
ers of Torres Straits, where, as I have witnessed, the 
several totemic groups — the dog-m.en, the pigeon-men, 
the shark-men, and other such groups — continue, in spite 
of the partial destruction by missionaries of their totem- 
istic beliefs, to revel in night-long gatherings, at which each 
group in ttirn mimics, in fantastic dances and with solemn 
delight, the movements of its totem animal. 

The importance of group-consciousness in savage life 
has been recently much insisted on by some anthropolo- 
gists, and indeed, in my view, overstated. Comford^ 
writes, "When the totem-clan meets to hold its peculiar 
dance, to work itself up till it feels the pulsing of its com- 
mon life through all its members, such nascent sense of 
individuality as a savage may have — it is always very 
faint — is merged and lost ; his consciousness is filled with a 
sense of sympathetic activity. The group is now feeling 
and acting as one soul, with a total force much greater 
than any of its members could exercise in isolation. The 
individual is lost, 'beside himself,' in one of those states 

» From Religion to Philosophy, p. 77. 



The Group Spirit 99 

of contagious enthusiasm in which it is well known that 
men become capable of feats which far outrange their 
normal powers." And again "Over and above their in- 
dividual experience, all the members of the group alike 
partake of what has been called the collective conscious- 
ness of the group as a whole. Unlike their private expe- 
rience, this pervading consciousness is the same in all, 
consisting in those epidemic or infectious states of feel- 
ing above described, which, at times when the common 
functions are being exercised, invade the whole field of 
mentality, and submerge the individual areas. To this 
group-consciousness belong also, from the first moment of 
their appearance all representations which are collective, 
a class in which all religious representations are included. 
These likewise are diffused over the whole mentality 
of the group, and are identical in all its members. . . . 
The collective consciousness is thus superindividual. It 
resides, of course, in the individuals composing the group. 
There is nowhere else for it to exist, but it resides in all of 
them together and not completely in any one of them. It 
is both in myself and yet not myself. It occupies a certain 
part of my mind and yet it stretches beyond and outside 
me to the limits of my group. And since I am only a small 
part of my group, there is much more of it outside me than 
inside. Its force therefore is much greater than my in- 
dividual force, and the more primitive I am the greater 
this preponderance will be. Here, then, there exists in 
the world a power which is much greater than any in- 
dividual's — superindividual, that is to say superhuman." 
** Because this force is continuous with my own con- 
sciousness, it is, as it were, a reservoir to wliich I have 
access, and from which I can absorb superhuman power to 
reinforce and enhance my own. This is its positive aspect 
— in so far as this power is not myself and greater than 
myself, it is a moral and restraining force, which can and 



100 Principles of Collective Psychology 

does impose upon the individual the necessity of observing 
the uniform behaviour of the group." This writer makes 
group-consciousness the source of both moraHty and re- 
ligion. ''The collective consciousness is also immanent 
in the individual himself, forming within him that unrea- 
soning impulse called conscience, which like a traitor 
within the gates, acknowledges from within the obligation 
to obey that other and much larger part of the collective 
consciousness which lies outside. Small wonder that 
obedience is absolute in primitive man, whose individual- 
ity is still restricted to a comparatively small field, while 
all the higher levels of mentality are occupied by this 
overpowering force."' The first rehgious idea is that of 
''this collective consciousness, the only moral power which 
can come to be felt as imposed from without." And 
Comford goes yet further and makes of the group self- 
consciousness the source of magic as well as of religion and 
morality. This primary reservoir of superindividual pow- 
er splits, he says, into two pools, human and non-human; 
the former is magic power, the latter is divine power. 

On this I would comment as follows. Although Corn- 
ford is right in insisting upon the large influence of group- 
consciousness, he is wrong, I think, in underestimating 
individuality. He does not go so far as some writers who 
suggest that group self-consciousness actually precedes 
individual self-consciousness, but he says of individual 
self-consciousness that it is but very faint in savages. I 
am more inclined to agree with Lotze, who in a famous 
passage asserted that even the crushed worm is in an ob- 
scure way aware of itself and its pain as set over against 
the world. Many facts of savage behaviour forbid us to 
accept the extreme view that denies them individual self- 
consciousness — individual names, secret names, private 
property, private rites, religious and magical, individual 

» Op. ciL, p. 82. 



The Group Spirit loi 

revenge, jealousy, running amok, leadership, self-assertion, 
pride, vanity, competition in games of skill and in tech- 
nical and artistic achievement. The flourishing of these 
and many other such things in primitive communities 
reveals clearly enough to the unbiassed observer in the 
field the effective presence of individual self-consciousness 
in the savage mind. In this connection I may refer to 
two pieces of evidence bearing very directly on the ques- 
tion reported by Dr. C. Hose and myself.^ Among the 
Sea-Dayaks or Ibans of Borneo we discovered the preva- 
lence of the belief in the *'nyarong" or private "spirit 
helper," some spiritual or animated individual power 
which a fortunate individual here and there finds reason 
to believe is attached to him personally for his guidance 
and help in all difficult situations. His behef in this 
personal helper and the rites by aid of which he communi- 
cates with it are kept secret from his fellows ; so that it was 
only after long and intimate acquaintance with these 
people that Dr. Hose began to suspect the existence of 
this peculiarly individualistic belief.^ In the same vol- 
umes we have described the Punans of Borneo, a people 
whose mode of life is in every respect extremely primitive. 
In this respect they are perhaps unequalled by any other 
existing people. Yet no one who is acquainted with these 
amiable folk could doubt that, although their group-con- 
sciousness is highly developed, they enjoy also a well- 
developed individual self-consciousness. How otherwise 
can we interpret the fact that a Punan who suffers mali- 
cious injury from a member of another tribe will nurse his 
vengeful feeling for an indefinite period and, after the lapse 
of years, will find an opportunity to bring down his en- 
emy secretly with blowpipe and poisoned dart? 

With Mr. Cornford's view of the part played by the 

^ Cp. The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, by Ch. Hose and W. McDougall. 
London, 19 12. 



102 Principles of Collective Psychology 

group spirit in moralising conduct I agree. I agree also 
that it is the collective life or mind that develops religion 
and in part magic ; but in my view Cornford attributes to 
the savage far too much reflective theorising ; he represents 
him as formulating a theory of the collective consciousness 
which is really almost identical with the interesting specu- 
lation of M. Levy Bruhl presently to be noticed, and he 
regards his conduct, his religious and magical practices, as 
guided by these theories. But that is to reverse the true 
order of things — to make theory precede practice; where- 
as in reality, especially in religion and magic, practice has 
everywhere preceded theory, often, as in this case, by 
thousands of generations. ^ 

It is true that the savage often behaves as though he held 
this theory of the collective consciousness as a field of 
force in which he participates; that his conduct seems to 
require such a theory for its rational justification. But it 
by no means follows that he has formulated any theory at 
all. What the savage is conscious of is, not a collective 
consciousness as a mysterious superhuman power, but the 
group itself, the group of concrete embodied fellow-men. 
He behaves and feels as he does, because participation in 
the life of the group directly modifies his individual 
tendencies and directly evokes these feelings and actions; 
he does not discover, or seek, any theory by which to 
explain them. Still less is it true that he performs these 
actions because he has formulated a theory of a collective 
consciousness. 

Mr. Cornford regards the savage idea of a collective 
consciousness as the germ of the idea of divine power or of 
God. Now this is connected with the question of ani- 
mism, preanimism, and dynanimism. It may be true that 
the notion of mana is the common prime source of re- 

* Mr. Cornford 's book might in fact be entitled with greater propriety 
From Philosophy to Religion, 



The Group Spirit 103 

ligious and magical ideas, but it does not follow that the 
idea of God is arrived at by way of a notion of collective 
mana. No doubt that would be the probable course of 
events, if the savage had as little sense of his individuality 
as Cornford supposes ; but it seems to me rather that the 
savage's strong sense of individuality has led at an early 
stage to the personalisation, the individuation, of manaj 
the vaguely conceived spiritual power and influence, and 
that it was only by a long course of religious and philo- 
sophical speculation that men reached the conception of 
the Absolute or of God as a universal power of which each 
personal consciousness is a partial manifestation. 

It is interesting to note that, if we could accept Corn- 
ford's views, we could now claim to witness the completion 
of one full cycle of the wheel of speculation, the last step 
having been made in an article in a recent number of the 
Hibbert Journal',^ for it is there suggested that the only 
God or super-individual power we ought to recognise and 
revere is, not a collective consciousness conceived as a 
supra-individual unity of consciousness, but the collective 
mind of humanity in the sense in which I am using the 
term, a system of mental forces that slowly progresses 
towards greater harmony and integration. 

M. Levy Bruhl has written an interesting, though highly 
speculative, account of savage mental life which he repre- 
sents as differing profoundly from our own, chiefly in that 
it is dominated by "collective representation. ' ' '' His view 
is not unlike that put forward by Cornford. 

Collective representations or ideas are rightly said to be 
the product of the group mind rather than of any in- 
dividual mind; that is to say, they have been gradually 
evolved by collective mental life; and they are said to 
differ from our ideas in being ''states more complex in 

^ Oct., 1914. 

^Les Fonctiones mentales dans les Societes inferieures, Alcan, Paris, 1910. 



104 Principles of Collective Psychology 

which the emotional and motor elements are integral 
parts of the ideas." Thinking by aid of these collective 
representations is said to have its own laws quite distinct 
from the laws of logic. 

These statements are no doubt correct; but both Levy 
Bruhl and Cornford commit the great error of assuming 
that the mental life of civilised man is conducted by each 
individual in a purely rational and logical manner; they 
overlook the fact that we also are largely domnnated by 
collective representations; for these collective representa- 
tions are nothing but ideas of objects to which traditional 
sentiments, sentiments of awe, of fear, of respect, of love, 
of reverence, are attached. Almost the whole of the 
religion and morality of the average civilised man is based 
on his acquisition of such collective representations, 
traditional sentiments grown up about ideas of objects, 
ideas which he receives ready made and sentiments which 
are impressed upon him by the community that has 
evolved them. 

It is no doubt true that in the main the field of objects to 
which collective representations apply is larger in savage 
life; and these ideas are more uniform and more power- 
ful and unquestioned, because the group is more homo- 
geneous in its sentiments. But it is, fortimately, only a 
rare individual here and there among us who in consider- 
able degree emancipates himself from the influence of such 
representations and becomes capable of confronting all 
objects about him in a perfectly cool, critical, logical 
attitude — who can "peep and botanise upon his rn other's 
grave." Only by strict intellectual discipline do we pro- 
gress towards strictly logical operations in relation to real 
life, towards pure judgments of fact as opposed to judg- 
ments of value. For our judgments of value are rooted in 
our sentiments; and whatever is for us an object of a 
sentiment of love or hate, of attachment or aversion, can 



The Group Spirit 105 

only with the greatest difficulty, if at all, be made an 
object of a pure judgment of fact. 

And Cornford and Levy Bruhl make the same mistake 
in regard to "collective representations" as in regard to 
tke group self-consciousness — namely, they credit the 
savage with theories for the explanation of the beliefs 
implicitly involved in the ''collective representations," for 
example, the theory of mystic participation, which is said 
to replace for the savage the civilised man's theory of me- 
chanical causation. But, when we regard any material 
object as holy, or sacred, or as of peculiar value, because 
it was given us by a departed friend, or belonged to and 
perhaps was once worn by a beloved person, our behaviour 
towards it is not determined by any theory of participa- 
tion ; if, for example, we touch it tenderly and with rever- 
ent care, that is the direct expression of our feeling. We 
even behave as if we held the theory of participation, to 
the extent of believing that the dead or distant person will 
suffer pain if we ill-use or neglect the object which is as- 
sociated with him in our minds, but without actually 
holding that belief; and still more without elaborating a 
theory of the nature of the process by which our action 
will produce such an effect. It is only a late and highly 
sophisticated reflection upon behaviour of this kind which 
leads to theories for the justification of such behaviour. It 
is not true, then, that we are logical individuals, while 
savages are wholly prelogical in virtue of the dominance 
among them of the collective mental life. The truth 
rather is that, wherever emotion qualifies our intellectual 
operations, it renders them other than purely and strictly 
logical; and the savage or the civilised man departs more 
widely from the strictly logical conduct of his intellect, in 
porportion as his conceptions of things are absorbed with- 
out critical reflection and analysis and are coloured with 
the traditional sentiments of his community. The aver- 



io6 Principles of Collective Psychology 

age savage, being more deeply immersed in his group, 
suffers these effects more strongly than the average 
civilised man. Yet the interval in this respect between 
the modem man of scientific culture and the average 
citizen of our modem states is far greater than that be- 
tween the latter and the savage. 

If one had to name the principal difference between the 
conditions of life of the typical savage and those of the 
average civilised man, one would, I think, have to point 
to the lack in civilised life of those conditions which so 
inevitably develop the group-consciousness of the savage. 
The family circle supplies to the young child something of 
these conditions, but in a very imperfect degree only. At 
an early age this influence is much weakened by general 
intercourse. As the individual approaches maturity, he 
finds himself at liberty to cut himself off completely from 
all his natural setting, to transplant himself to any part of 
the world, and to share in the life of any civilised com- 
munity. He can earn his livelihood anywhere, and he 
knows nothing of communal responsibility. 

Progressive weakening of the conditions that force the 
development of group self-consciousness has characterised 
the whole course of the development of civilisation, and 
has reached its climax in the conditions of life in our large 
cities. 

In primitive communities the conditions of group self- 
consciousness are, as we have seen, fourfold; namely 
kinship, territorial, traditional and occupational associa- 
tion. All these are present in the highest degree in the 
nomadic group under the typical patriarchal system. 

When kinship groups take to agriculture and become 
permanently settled on one spot, the kinship factor tends 
to be weakened, through the inclusion of alien elements 
and the territorial factor becomes the most important 
condition. Throughout European history the territorial 



ill 



I 



The Group Spirit 107 

factor, expressing itself in the form of the village-com- 
munity, remained of universal importance in this respect ; 
the Roman Empire and the Roman Church weakened it 
greatly ; but everywhere outside those spheres it continued 
to be of dominant importance until the great social revolu- 
tion of the modern industrial period. 

The village -community maintained much of the tradi- 
tion and custom that tend to develop group self-conscious- 
ness with its moralising influence. But at the present 
time almost the only condition of wide and general in- 
fluence that continues in times of peace to foster group 
self-consciousness is occupational association. And so 
we find men tending more and more to be grouped for all 
serious collective activities according to their occupations. 
From the earliest development of European industry this 
tendency has been strong; it produced the trading and 
craft guilds which played so great a part in medieval 
Europe; and, though the monarchical and capitaHstic 
regimes of modern times have done all they can to repress 
and break up these occupational groups, and have greatly 
restricted their influence, they have failed to suppress them 
entirely. The climax of this tendency for the occupational 
to replace and overshadow all other forms of self-con- 
scious grouping is present-day Syndicalism. 

The natural conditions of group self-consciousness, 
which in primitive societies rendered its development in- 
evitable and spontaneous in every man, have then been in 
the main destroyed. But man cannot stand alone; men 
cannot live happily as mere individuals; they desire and 
crave and seek membership in a group, in whose collective 
opinions and emotions and self -consciousness and activities 
they may share, with which they may identify themselves, 
thereby lessening the burden of individual responsibility, 
judgment, decision, and effort. 

Hence in this age the natural groupings and the involun- 



io8 Principles of Collective Psychology 

tary developments of group-consciousness are largely re- 
placed by an enormous development of artificial voluntary- 
groupings, over and above the natural groupings that are 
still only in very imperfect measure determined by the 
weakened force of the natural conditions, namely kinship, 
neighbourhood, and occupation. 

In part these artificial groupings are designed to rein- 
force the natural conditions, as, for example, village festi- 
vals. The whole population of a country such as our own 
is permeated by a vast and complexly interwoven, or 
rather tangled, skein of the bonds of voluntary associa- 
tions. Many of these are, of course, formed to undertake 
some definite work, to achieve some end which can only be 
achieved by co-operative effort. But in the majority of 
such cases the satisfactions yielded by group life play a 
very great part in leading to the formation of and in 
maintaining the groups, for example, groups of philan- 
thropic workers, the makers of charity bazaars, the salva- 
tion army, the churches, the chapels, the sects. Most of 
such associations that have any success and continuity of 
existence contain a nucleus of persons who identify them- 
selves in the fullest possible manner with the group, make 
its interest their leading concern, the desire of its welfare 
their dominant motive, and find in its service their princi- 
pal satisfaction and happiness. 

And in very many voluntary associations the group 
motives, the desire for the satisfactions to be found in 
group life, are of prime importance, predominating vastly 
over the desire to achieve any particular end by co-opera- 
tive action. Such are our countless clubs and societies 
formed frankly for recreation, or for mutual improvement, 
and for all kinds of ostensible purposes which serve merely 
as excuses or reasons for the existence of the club. In the 
majority of instances these declared purposes really serve 
merely or chiefly to exert a certain natural selection of 



II 



ii 



The Group Spirit 109 

persons, to bring together persons of similar tastes as 
voluntary associates, to enable, in short, birds of a feather 
to flock together. Even some of our enduring historical 
institutions owe their continuance chiefly to the advan- 
tages and satisfactions that proceed from group-conscious- 
ness, for example, colleges, school-houses, and political 
parties, especially perhaps in America. Party feeling, as 
Sir H. Maine rightly said, is frequently a remedy for the 
inertia of democracy. 

The savage, when he maintains associations other than 
those determined by natural conditions, intensifies his 
group-consciousness by wearing badges and totem marks, 
by tattooing and scarring, and by indulging in various rites 
and ceremonies, about which a certain secrecy and mys- 
tery is maintained. And civilised men exhibit just the 
same tendency and take very similar measures to intensify 
group-consciousness. We have our club colours and rib- 
bons and blazers, our college gowns and colours, our Oxford 
accent, our badges of membership, and so on. Free- 
masonry, with its lodges and badges and mysterious rites, 
seems to be the purest example on a large scale. And, 
when the group-consciousness and the group sentiment 
have been acquired, we continue to cultivate it purely for 
its own sake, by holding annual dinners and reunions of 
old boys, and so forth. 

It is of the greatest importance that this tendency to 
seek and maintain a share in group-consciousness, which, 
as we have seen, manifests itself everywhere even under 
the most adverse conditions, not merely yields comfort and 
satisfaction to individuals, but brings about results which 
are in almost every way extremely advantageous for the 
higher development of human life in general. 

We have seen that, in the well-organised group, collec- 
tive deliberation, judgment, and action are raised to a 
higher plane of effectiveness than is possible to the average 



no Principles of Collective Psychology 

member of the group. But apart from that, the group 
spirit continues with us, as with the savage (though in a 
less effective degree) to be the great sociahsing agency. 
In the majority of cases it is the principal, if not the sole, 
factor which raises a man's conduct above the plane of 
pure egoism, leads him to think and care and work for 
others as well as for himself. Try to imagine any man 
wholly deprived of his group-consciousness and set over 
against all his fellow-men as an individual unit, and you will 
see that you could expect but little from him in the way of 
self-sacrifice or public service — at most a care for his wife 
and children and sporadic acts of kindliness when direct 
appeals are made to his pity; but none of that energetic 
and devoted public service and faithful self-sacrificing co- 
operation without which the continued welfare of any 
human society is impossible. 

The group spirit destroys the opposition and the conflict 
between the crudely individualistic and the primitive al- 
truistic tendencies of our nature. 

This is the peculiar merit and efficiency of the complex 
motives that arise from the group spirit; they bring the 
egoistic self-seeking impulses into the service of society and 
harmonise them with the altruistic tendencies. The group 
spirit secures that the egoistic and the altruistic tendencies 
of each man's nature, instead of being in perpetual con- 
flict, as they must be in its absence, shall harmoniously 
co-operate and reinforce one another throughout a large 
part of the total field of human activity. 

For it is of the essence of the group spirit that the in- 
dividual identifies himself, as we say, with the group more 
or less ; that is to say, in technical language, his self -regard- 
ing sentiment becomes extended to the group more or less 
completely, so that he is moved to desire and to work for 
its welfare, its success, its honour and glory, by the same 
motives which prompt him to desire and to work for his 



The Group Spirit iii 

own welfare and success and honour ; as in the case of the 
student working for a scholarship or university prize, or 
the member of an exploring expedition or fighting group. 
Further, the motives supplied by the group spirit may be 
stronger than, and may overpower, the purely individual- 
istic egoistic motives, just because they harmonise with, 
and are supported by, any altruistic tendency or tendencies 
comprised in the make-up of the individual; which altru- 
istic tendencies will, where the group spirit is lacking, 
oppose and weaken the effects of purely egoistic motives. 
To illustrate this principle, let us imagine an Englishman 
who, in a Congo forest, finds a white man sick or in difficul- 
ties. To succour the sick man may be to incur grave risks, 
and he is tempted to pass on; but the thought comes to 
him that in so doing he will lower the prestige of the white 
man in the eyes of the natives; and this idea, evoking the 
motives of the group spirit which unites all white men in 
such a land, brings victory to his sense of pity in its 
struggle with selfish fear. 

In this way, that is by extension to the group, the 
egoistic impulses are transmuted, subhmated, and de- 
prived of their individualistic selfish character and effects 
and are turned to public service. Hence it is that it is 
generally so difficult or impossible to analyse the motives 
of any public service or social activity and to display 
them as either purely egoistic or altruistic ; for they are, as 
Herbert Spencer called them, ego-altruistic. And hence 
it comes about that both the cynic and the idealist can 
make out plausible cases, when they seek to show that 
either egoism or altruism predominates in human life. 
Both are right in a partial sense. 

Another noteworthy feature of the group spirit renders 
it extremely effective in promoting social life; namely the 
fact that, although the group sentiment is apt to deter- 
mine an attitude of rivalry, competition, and antagonism 



112 Principles of Collective Psychology 

towards similarly constituted groups, yet a man may share 
in the self-consciousness of more groups than one, so long 
as their natures and aims do not necessarily bring them 
into rivalry. And in our complex modern societies this 
principle of multiple group-consciousness in each man is 
of extreme importance; for without it, and in the absence 
or comparative lack of the natural conditions of grouping 
other than the occupational, the whole population would 
become divided into occupational groups, each fighting 
collectively against every other for the largest possible 
share of the good things of life. A tendency towards this 
state of things is very perceptible, in spite of the correcting 
cross-connections of kinship, of church and political party, 
and of territorial association. 

But another principle of multiple group-consciousness is, 
perhaps, of still greater importance, namely that it allows 
the formation of a hierarchy of group sentiments for a 
system of groups in which each larger group includes the 
lesser; each group being made the object of the extended 
self -regarding sentiment in a way which includes the senti- 
ment for the lesser group in the sentiment for the larger 
group in which it is comprised. Thus the family, the 
village, the county, the country as a whole, form for the 
normal man the objects of a harmonious hierarchy of 
sentiments of this sort, each of which strengthens rather 
than weakens the others, and yields motives for action 
which on the whole co-operate and harmonise rather than 
conflict. 

Such a hierarchy is seen in savage life. It often happens 
that a man is called on to join in the defence of some village 
of the tribe other than his own. In such cases he is moved 
not only by his tribal sentiment, but also by his sentiments 
for his village and family. The sentiment for the part 
supports the sentiment for the whole. 

It is of considerable importance also that in general the 



The Group Spirit 113 

development of a sentiment of attachment to one group 
not only does not prevent, but rather facilitates, the 
development of similar sentiments for other groups. And 
this is especially true when the groups concerned are re- 
lated to one another as parts and wholes, that is, when 
they form a hierarchy of successively more widely inclu- 
sive groups. The sentiment for the smaller group (e. g. 
the family) naturally develops first in the child's mind; if 
only for the reason that this is the group of which he can 
first form a definite idea, and with the whole of which he is 
in immediate relations. The strong development of this 
first group sentiment prepares the child's mind for the 
development of other and wider group sentiments. For 
it increases his power of grasping intellectually the group 
of persons as a complex whole; and it strengthens by 
exercise those impulses or primary tendencies which must 
enter into the constitution of any group sentiment; and, 
thirdly, it prevents the excessive development of the purely 
individualistic attitude, of the habit of looking at every 
situation and weighing all values from the strictly in- 
dividualistic and egoistic standpoint; which attitude, if 
once it becomes habitual, must form a powerful hindrance 
to the development of the wider group sentiments, when 
the child arrives at an age to grasp the idea of the larger 
group. 

The organisation of an army again illustrates these 
principles in relatively clear and simple fashion. In our 
own army the regiment is the traditional self-conscious 
unit about which traditional sentiment and ritual have 
been carefully fostered, in part through realisation of their 
practical importance, in part because this unit is of such a 
size and nature as to be well suited to call out strongly 
the natural group tendencies of its component individuals. 
On the whole the military authorities, and especially Lord 
Haldane in the formation of the territorial army, seem to 



114 Principles of Collective Psychology 

have wisely recognised the importance of the group spirit 
of the regiment; although during the Great War it was, 
imder the pressure of other considerations, apparently 
lost sight of at certain times and places, with, I believe, 
deplorable consequences. 

In modem warfare, and especially in the Great War, the 
Division has tended to become of predominant importance 
as the unit of organisation; and accordingly, without 
destroying or superseding regimental group- conscious- 
ness, the sentiment for the Division has been in many 
instances a very strong factor in promoting the spiritual 
cohesion and efficiency of the army. Certain Divisions, 
such as the loth and the 29th, have covered themselves 
with glory, so that the soldiers have learnt to feel a great 
pride in and a devotion to the Division. 

This larger group, although of comparatively ephemeral 
existence and therefore devoid of long traditions coming 
down from the past, is in perfect and obvious harmony, in 
purpose and spirit and material organisation, with the 
battalions and other tmits of which it is composed; and, 
accordingly, the sentiment for the larger group does not 
enter into rivalry with that for the battalion, the battery, 
or other smaller unit; rather it comprises this within 
its own organisation and derives energy and stability 
from it. 

These psychological principles of group-consciousness 
are, I think, well borne out inductively, by any compara- 
tive survey; that is to say, we find that, where family 
sentiment and the sentiment for the local group are strong, 
there also the wider group sentiments are strong, and good 
citizenship, patriotism, and ready devotion to pubHc 
services of all kinds are the rule. The strongest most 
stable States have always been those in which family 
sentiment has been strong, especially those in which it has 
been strejigthened and supported by the custom of ances- 



The Group Spirit 115 

tor worship, as in Rome, Japan and China. Scotchmen 
again (Highlanders especially) are noted for clannishness, 
and Scotch cousins have become a byword ; a fact which 
implies the great strength of the family sentiment. The 
clan sentiment, which is clearly only an extension of the 
family sentiment, is also notoriously strong. The senti- 
ment for Scotland as a whole is no less strong in the hearts 
of all her sons. But, and this is the important point, 
these strong group sentiments are perfectly compatible 
with and probably conducive to a sentiment for the still 
wider group, Great Britain or the British Empire; and the 
public services rendered to these larger groups by men of 
Scottish birth are equally notorious. 

In these considerations we may see, I think, a principal 
ground of the importance of the institution of the family 
for the welfare of the state. The importance has often 
been insisted upon ; but too much stress is usually laid upon 
the material aspects, and not enough upon the mental 
effects, of family life. 

It has been a grave mistake on the part of many collec- 
tivists, from Plato onwards, that they have sought to 
destroy the family and to bring up all children as the chil- 
dren of the state only, in some kind of barrack system. 
It is not too much to say that, if they could succeed in this 
(and in this country great strides in this direction are 
being rapidly made) , they would destroy the mental foun- 
dations of all possibility of collective life of the higher 
type. 

We touch here upon a question of policy of the highest 
importance. There are, it seems to me, three distinct 
policies which may be deliberately pursued, for the secur- 
ing of the predominance of public or social motives over 
egoistic motives. First, we may aim at building up group 
life on the foundation of a system of discipline which will 
result in more or less complete suppression of the egoistic 



ii6 Principles of Collective Psychology 

tendencies of individuals, the building up in them of 
habits of unquestioning obedience to authority. I imag- 
ine that the Jesuit system of education might fairly be 
taken as the most successful and thorough-going appHca- 
tion of this principle. The organisation of an army of 
imwilling conscripts to fight for a foreign power must rest 
on the same basis. Some group spirit no doubt will gen- 
erally grow up. But, though wonderful results have been 
obtained in this way, the system has two great weaknesses. 
First, it seeks to repress and destroy more than half of the 
powerful forces that move men to action — namely, the 
egoistic motives in general — instead of making use of them 
directing them to social ends. Secondly, it necessarily 
crushes individuality and therefore all capacity of pro- 
gress and further development in various directions; it 
results in a rigidly conservative system without possi- 
bility of spontaneous development. 

The second system is that which aims at developing in 
all members of the state or inclusive group a sentiment of 
devotion to the whole, while suppressing the growth of 
sentiments for any minor groups within the whole. This 
was the system of Plato's Republic and is essentially the 
collectivist ideal. It is the policy of those who would 
suppress all sentimental groupings, all local loyalties and 
patriotisms, in favour of the ideal of the brotherhood of 
man, the cosmopolitan ideal. I have already pointed out 
one great weakness of this plan — namely, that this senti- 
ment for the all-inclusive group cannot be effectively 
developed save by way of development of the minor 
group sentiments. And, though it may succeed with some 
persons, there will always be many who cannot grasp the 
idea of the larger whole sufficiently firmly and intelli- 
gently to make it the object of any strong and enlightened 
sentiment of attachment ; such persons will be left on the 
purely egoistic level, whereas their energies might have 



The Group Spirit 117 

been effectively socialised by the development of some 
less inclusive group -consciousness. 

Again, the smaller group is apt to call out a man's 
energies more effectively, because he can see and foresee 
more clearly the effects of his own actions on its behalf. 
Whereas the larger the group, the more are the efforts of 
individuals and their effects obscured and lost to view in 
vast movements of the collective life. That is to say, the 
smaller groups harmonise more effectively than the larger 
groups the purely egoistic and the altruistic motives 
(except of coiurse in the case of those few persons who can 
play leading parts in the life of the larger group). For, 
though a man may be moved by his devotion to the group 
to work for its welfare, he will work still more energetically 
if, at the same time, he is able to achieve personal distinc- 
tion and acknowledgment, if the purely egoistic motives 
can also find satisfaction in his activities. Hence this 
second policy also, no matter how successful, fails to make 
the most of men, fails to bring to the fullest exercise all 
their powers in a manner that will promote the welfare of 
the whole. Thirdly, this system loses the advantages of 
the healthy rivalry between groups within the whole; 
which rivalry is a means to a great liberation of human 
energies. These are the weaknesses of the over-central- 
ised state, such as modern France or the Roman Empire. 

Only the third policy can liberate and harmonise the 
energies of men to the fullest extent; namely, that which 
aims at developing in each individual a hierarchy of group 
sentiments in accordance with the natural course of 
development. 

One other virtue of the group spirit must be mentioned. 
Although it tends to bring similar groups into keen rivalry 
and even into violent conflict, the antagonism between 
men who are moved to conflict by the group spirit is less 
bitter than that between individuals who are brought into 



Ii8 Principles of Collective Psychology 

conflict by personal motives ; for the members of each 
group or party, though they may wish to frustrate or even 
to destroy the other party as such, may remain benevolent 
towards its members individually. And this is rendered 
easier by the fact that the members of each group, recog- 
nising that their antagonists are also moved by the group 
spirit, by loyalty and devotion to the group, will sympa- 
thise with and respect their motives far more readily and 
fully than they would, if they ascribed to their opponents 
purely egoistic motives. This recognition, even though 
it be not clearly formulated, softens the conflict and mod- 
erates the hostile feelings that opposition inevitably 
arouses in men keenly pursuing any end, especially one 
which they hold to be a public good; in this way it renders 
possible that continuance of friendly relations between 
members of bitterly opposed parties which has happily 
been the rule and at the same time the seeming anomaly of 
EngHsh public life. 

In our older educational system, and especially in the 
** public schools" and older universities, the advantages 
and the importance of developing the group spirit have 
long been practically recognised — esprit de corps has 
been cultivated by the party system, by rivalry of groups 
within the group ; by forms, schoolhouses, colleges, clubs, 
teams, games, and by keeping the honour and glory of the 
school, college, or other unit, prominently before the minds 
of the scholars in many effective ways. It is, I think, one 
of the gravest defects of our primary system of education 
that it makes so little provision for development of this 
kind; that, while it weakens the family sentiment, it 
provides no effective substitute for it. Something has 
been done in recent years to remedy this defect, notably 
the fostering of the boy-scout movement ; but every oppor- 
tunity of supplying this need should be seized by those who 
are responsible for the direction of educational policy. 



The Group Spirit 119 

The importance of the group spirit may be illustrated 
by pointing to those individuals and classes which are 
denied its benefits. The tramp, the cosmopolitan globe- 
trotter, the outcast in general, whether the detachment 
from group life be due to the disposition or choice of the 
individual or to unfortunate circumstances, is apt to show, 
only too clearly, how little man is able, standing alone, to 
maintain a decent level of conduct and character. On a 
large scale this is illustrated by the casteless classes in 
caste communities, and especially by Eurasians of India 
and by other persons and classes of mixed descent, who 
fail to identify themselves wholly with either of the groups 
from which they derive their blood. The moral defects 
of persons of these classes have often been deplored, and 
they have usually been attributed to the mixture of widely 
different hereditary strains. There is probably some 
truth in the view ; but in general the moral shortcomings of 
persons of these classes are chiefly due to the fact that they 
do not fully share in the life of any group having old 
established moral traditions and sentiments. 

Summary of Principal Conditions of the Develop- 
ment OF THE Group Spirit 

We have seen that the group spirit plays a vastly im- 
portant part in raising men above the purely animal level 
of conduct, in extending each man's interests beyond the 
narrow circle of his own home and family, in inspiring him 
to efforts for the common good, in stimulating him to post- 
pone his private to public ends, in enabling the common 
man to rise at times, as shown by a multitude of instances 
during the Great War, to lofty heights of devotion and 
self-sacrifice. 

The development of the group spirit consists in two 
essential processes, namely, the acquisition of knowledge 



120 Principles of Collective Psychology 

of the group and the formation of some sentiment of 
attachment to the group as such. It is essential that the 
group shall be apprehended or conceived as such by its 
members. Therefore the group spirit is favoured by what- 
ever tends to define the group, to mark it off distinctly 
from other groups; by geographical boundaries; by pecu- 
liarities of skin-colour or of physical type, of language, or 
accent, of dress, custom, or habit, common to the members 
of the group ; that is to say, by homogeneity and distinct- 
iveness of type within the group. 

And, though definition of the group as such within the 
minds of its members is the prime condition of the growth 
of the group spirit, that spirit will be the more effective 
the fuller and truer is the knowledge of the group in the 
minds of its members. Just as individual self-knowledge 
favours self-direction and wisdom of choice, so group 
self-knowledge must, if it is to be fully effective, comprise 
not only the conception of the group as a whole but also 
the fullest possible knowledge of the component parts and 
individuals and an understanding of their relations to one 
another. In this respect smallness and homogeneity of 
the group are obviously favourable. But knowledge of 
the group, however exact and widely diffused, is of itself 
of no effect, if there be not also widely diffused in the 
members some sentiment of attachment to the group. The 
prevailing group sentiment is almost inevitably one of 
attachment. There are exceptional instances in which 
men are compelled to act as members of a group which they 
hate or despise, notably in some cases of compulsory 
military service and in convict gangs ; but it must be rare 
that, even under such conditions, some sense of common 
interest, some fellow feeling for other members in like 
distressing circumstances, does not lead to the growth of 
some group spirit, provided only that the group has some 
continuity and some homogeneity in essentials. 



J 



The Group Spirit 121 

In all natural and spontaneously formed groups, the 
extension of the self -regarding sentiment to the group is a 
normal and inevitable process ; and, like the self -regarding 
sentiment, the sentiment so formed may range from an 
insane and incorrigible pride (as often in the case of the 
family sentiment) to a decent self-respect that is perfectly 
compatible with a modest attitude and with reasonable 
claims upon and regard for the interests of other groups. 

The main difference between the self -regarding senti- 
ment and the developed group sentiment is that the latter 
commonly involves an element of devotion to the group 
for its own sake and the sake of one's fellow members. 
That is to say, the group sentiment is a synthesis of the 
self-regarding and the altruistic tendencies in which they 
are harmonised to mutual support and re-enforcement: 
the powerful egoistic impulses being sublimated to higher 
ends than the promotion of the self's welfare. ' 

Further, the group has, or may have, a greater contin- 
uity of existence than the individual, both in the past and 
in the future; and for this reason, and because also it 
includes the purely altruistic tendency, the group senti- 
ment is capable of idealisation in a high degree and of 
yielding satisfactions far more enduring and profound than 
the most refined self -sentiment. 

Both knowledge of the group and the growth of the 
group sentiment are greatly promoted by two processes, in 
the absence of which the group spirit can attain only a 
very modest development. These are free intercourse 
within the group and free intercoiu"se between the group 
and other groups. We shall have occasion to discuss and 
illustrate them in later chapters. 

^ At this point I would refer the reader to the discussion of the self-regard- 
ing sentiment (Chapter VII) in my Social Psychology. 



CHAPTER V 
Peculiarities of Groups of Various Types 

WE have discussed the psychology of the simple 
crowd or unorganised group ; and taking an army 
as an extreme and relatively simple type of the 
highly organised group, we have used it to illustrate the 
principal ways in which organisation of the group modifies 
its collective life, raising it in many respects high above 
that of the crowd. 

I propose now to discuss very briefly the peculiarities of 
groups of several types. Some classification of groups 
seems desirable as an aid to the discovery of the general 
principles of collective life and their application to the 
understanding of social life in general. It seems impos- 
sible to discover any single principle of classification. 
Almost every group that enjoys a greater continuity of 
existence than the simple crowd partakes in some degree 
of qualities common to all. But we may distinguish the 
most important qualities and roughly classify groups 
according to the degrees in which they exhibit them. 

Apart from crowds, which, as we have seen, may be 
either fortuitously gathered or brought together by some 
common purpose, there are many simple groups which, 
though accidental in origin (i.e. not brought together by 
common purpose or interest) and remaining unorganised, 
yet present in simple and rudimentary form some of the 
features of group life. 

The persons seated in one compartment of a railway 

122 



Peculiarities of Groups 123 

train during a long journey may be entirely strangers to 
one another at the outset; yet, even in the absence of 
conversation, they in the course of some hours will begin 
to manifest some of the peculiarities of the psychological 
group. To some extent they will have come to a mutual 
imder standing and adjustment ; and, when a stranger adds 
himself to their company, his entrance is felt to some ex- 
tent as an intrusion which at the least demands readjust- 
ments; he is regarded with curious and to some extent 
hostile glances. If an outsider threatens to encroach on 
the rights of one of the company, the others will readily 
combine in defence of their member ; and any little incident 
affecting their one common interest (namely, punctual 
arrival of the train at its destination) quickly reveals, and 
in doing so strengthens, the bond of common feeling. 

On a sea voyage the group spirit of the passenger ship 
attains a greater development, by reason of the longer 
continuance of the group, its more complete detachment 
and definition, the sense of greater hazard affecting all 
alike, the sense of dependence on mutual courtesy and 
good- will and sympathy for the comfort and enjoyment of 
all. Very soon the experienced traveller, contrasting and 
comparing this present company with those of previous 
voyages, sums up its qualities and defects and lays his 
plans accordingly. And by the time that an intermediate 
port is reached, where perhaps the most "grumpy" and 
least entertaining member of the company disembarks, 
even his departure is felt by the rest as a loss that leaves 
a gap in the structure of the group. 

Such fortuitous and ephemeral groups apart, all others 
may be classed in the two great divisions of natural and 
artificial groups. 

The natural groups again fall into two main classes 
which partly coincide — namely, those rooted in kinship 
and those determined by geographical conditions. The 



124 Principles of Collective Psychology 

family is the pure example of the former; the population 
of a small island, the type of the latter kind. '^ The main 
difference is that the bonds of the kinship group are purely 
or predominantly mental and therefore can, and commonly 
do, remain effective in spite of all spatial separation and 
of all lack of common purpose or of material benefits 
accruing from membership in the group. ^ 

The artificial groups may be divided into three great 
classes, the purposive, the customary or traditional, and 
the mixed ; those of the last kind combining the purposive 
and the traditional characters in various proportions. 

The purposive group is brought together and maintained 
by the existenpe of a common purpose in the minds of all 
its members. It is, in respect of efficiency, the highest 
type; for it is essentially self-conscious, aware of its ends 
and of its own nature, and it deliberately adopts an organ- 
isation suited to the attainment of those ends. The 
simplest and purest type is the social club, a body of people 
who meet together to satisfy the promptings of the grega- 
rious instinct and to enjoy the pleasures of group life. In 
the great majority of instances, the social club adopts some 
form of recreation — debating, music, chess, whist, football, 
tennis, cycling — the practice of which gives point and 
definition to the activities of members and secures secon- 
dary advantages. It is noteworthy that on this purely 
recreational plane, clubs and societies of all sorts seek in 
almost all cases to enhance the group-consciousness and 
hence the satisfactions of group life by entering into rela- 
tions, generally relations of friendly rivalry, but sometimes 
merely of affiliation and formal intercourse, with other 
like groups. For not only is the group-consciousness en- 
riched and strengthened by such intercourse; but, when 
the rival or communicating groups, becoming aware of 
one another, become informally or, more generally, for- 
mally allied to constitute a larger whole, the consciousness 



Peculiarities of Groups 125 

of participation in this larger whole gratifies more fully the 
gregarious impulse and enhances the sense of power and 
confidence in each member of each constituent group. 
This seems to be the main ground of that universal ten- 
dency to the formation of ever more inclusive associations 
of clubs and societies, which, overleaping even national 
boundaries and geographical and racial divisions, has 
produced numerous world-wide associations. 

Another very numerous class of strictly purposive 
groups is to be found in the commercial companies. In 
these the group spirit commonly remains at the lowest 
level ; for the dominant motive is individual financial gain, 
and the only common bond among the shareholders is 
their interest in the management of the company so 
far as it affects the private and individual end of each one. 
Group self-knowledge, organisation, tradition, and group 
sentiment are all at a minimum; accordingly the group 
remains incapable of effective deliberation or action. It 
operates through its board of directors and officers and, 
owing to its incapacity for group action, has to rely upon 
the provisions of the Company Laws for the control of 
their actions. 

A third large class of purposive groups are the associa- 
tions formed for the furthering of some public end. Many 
such groups are purely altruistic or philanthropic; but in 
the majority the members hope to share in some degree in 
the public benefits for the attainment of which the group 
is formed. In many such associations, group life hardly 
rises above the low level of the commercial company; the 
main difference being that, in virtue of the "disinterested" 
or public-spirited nature of the dominant purpose, the 
members regard one another and their executive officers 
with greater confidence and sympathy; even though re- 
maining personally unacquainted. Notable instances of 
such associations, achieving great public ends, are ''The 



126 Principles of Collective Psychology 



I 



National Trust for the Preservation of Places of Natural 
Beauty or Historic Interest," and **The Public Foot- 
paths Association." Other associations of this kind have 
something of the nature of a commercial company: e.g. 
*'The First Garden City Company," and "The Trust 
Houses Company." The peculiarity of these is that the 
motive of financial gain is subordinated to, while co- 
operating with, the desire for achievement of a public good, 
a benefit to the whole community in which the members. of 
the group share in an almost inappreciable degree only. 
Such associations are very characteristic of the life of this 
country; and it may be hoped that their multiplication 
and development will prove to be one of the ameliorating 
factors of the future, softening the asperities of commercial 
life, correcting to some degree that narrowing of the 
sympathies, and preventing that tendency to class an- 
tagonisms, which purely commercial associations inevi- 
tably produce. The great co-operative societies seem to 
have something of this character; for, although the dom-' 
inant motive of membership is probably in most cases 
private advantage, yet membership brings with it some 
sense of participation in a great movement for better 
social organisation, some sense of loyalty to the group, 
some rudimentary group knowledge and group spirit, some 
interest in and satisfaction in the prosperity of the group 
for its own sake, over and above the strictly private inter- 
est of each member. The introduction of various forms 
of profit sharing will give something of this character to 
commercial companies. 

The recent investments in government loans by millions 
of individuals, acting in part from patriotic motives, must 
have a similar tendency; and a similar effect on a large 
scale must be produced by any nationalisation of indus- 
tries, a fact which is one of the weightiest grounds for 
desiring such nationalisation ; though it remains uncertain 



Peculiarities of Groups 127 

whether, when the scale of the association becomes so 
large as to include the whole nation, the bulk of the citizens 
will be able effectively to discern the identity of their 
public and private interests, and whether, therefore, such 
nationalisation will greatly promote that fusion or co- 
operation of public and private motives which is the es- 
sential function and merit of the group spirit. 

The most characteristic British group of the purposive 
type is the association formed for some public or quasi- 
public end and operating through a democratically elected 
committee or committees and sub-committees. Such 
groups are the cradle of the representative principle and 
the training ground of the democratic spirit, especially of 
its deliberative and executive faculties. In them each 
member, taking part in the election of the committee, 
delegates to them his share of authority, but continues to 
exert control over them by his vote upon reports of the 
committee and in the periodic re-election of its members. 
On this ground the citizens are trained to understand the 
working of the representative principle; to yield to the 
opinion of the majority on the choice of means, without 
ceasing loyally to co-operate towards the common end; 
to observe the necessary rules of procedure; to abide by 
group decisions ; to influence group opinion in debate, and 
in turn to be influenced by it and respect it ; to differ with- 
out enmity; to keep the common end in view, in spite of 
the inevitable working of private and personal motives ; to 
understand the necessity for delegation, and to respect the 
organisation through which alone the group raises itself 
above the level of the crowd. 

Traditional groups of pure or nearly pure character are 
relatively infrequent. Perhaps the castes of the Hindu 
world are, of all large groups, those which most nearly 
approach the pure type. Traditional grouping is charac- 
teristic of stagnant old established populations, of which 



128 Principles of Collective Psychology 

it is the basis of organisation and principal cement. No 
doubt in almost every case the formation of the traditional 
group was in some degree purposive; but the original 
purpose has generally been lost sight of; myths and legends 
have grown up to explain the origin of and give a fictitious 
purpose or raison d'etre to the group. In the absence of 
any definite practical piu-pose animating the group and 
holding it together, its stability is secured and its tradition 
is re-enforced and given a visible presentation by the 
development of ritual. Of all the great groups among us 
the Free Masons perhaps afford the best illustration of this 
type. 

Far more important in the British world are the groups 
of the mixed type, partly traditional and partly purposive, 
groups having a long history and origins shrouded in the 
mists of antiquity, but having some strong and more or less 
definite common piu-pose. Of such groups the Christian 
Church is the greatest example. In the Roman Church, 
whose history has been so little interrupted, tradition 
attains its fullest power, and the regard for the past is 
strengthened and supplemented by the prospect of an 
indefinitely prolonged future directed towards the same 
ends. Its organisation has grown gradually under the 
one continued overshadowing purpose, every addition 
becoming embodied and established in the great tradition, 
the strength of which is perpetually maintained by ritual. 
And this traditional organisation is not only borne in the 
minds of each generation of members of the Church, but, 
in an ever increasing degree, has embodied itself in a 
material system of stone and glass and metal and printed 
words ; these constitute a visible and enduring presentment 
which, though entirely disconnected and heterogeneous 
in a merely material sense, yet provides fixed points in 
the whole organisation, contributing immensely to its sta- 
bility, and aiding greatly in bringing home to the minds of 



A 



Peculiarities of Groups 129 

its members the unity of the whole group in the past, the 
present, and the future. Many groups or sects having the 
same essential purpose as the Roman Church have aimed 
to establish a tradition without the aid of such material 
embodiments; but their ephemeral histories illustrate the 
wisdom of the mother Church which, in building up her 
vast organisation, has recognised the limitations and the 
frailties of the human mind and has not scorned to adapt 
herself to them in order to overcome them. 

On a smaller scale our ancient universities and their 
colleges illustrate the same great type of the partly tradi- 
tional partly purposive group, and the same great prin- 
ciples of collective life — namely, the stability derived from 
the continuity of tradition, from its careful culture, and 
its partial embodiment in ritual and material structure. 

An essential weakness of all such groups in a progressive 
community is that tradition tends to overshadow purpose; 
hence every such group tends towards the rigidity and 
relative futility of the purely traditional group. Its 
organisation tends to set so rigidly that it is incapable of 
adapting itself to the changing needs of the present and 
the future; the rriaintenance of tradition, which is but a 
means towards the acknowledged endj becomes an end in 
itself to which the primary purpose of the whole is in 
danger of being subordinated. -i 

The churches and the universities alike illustrate vividly 
the principles of a group within a gi'oup. Each of the 
older universities is a microcosm, a small model of the 
national life, and largely to this fact is due its educational 
value as a place of residence. Each college evokes a 
strong group spirit in all its members; and this sentiment 
for the college, though it may and does in some minor 
matters conflict with the sentiment for the university, is in 
the main synthesised within this, and indeed is the chief 
factor in the strength of that sentiment. 



130 Principles of Collective Psychology 

Tlie group spirit of each college owes much of its 
strength to the carefully fostered, but perfectly friendly, 
rivalry between the several colleges in sports and studies 
and other activities. The close companionship and emu- 
lation between a number of small communities of similar 
constitution and purpose, each having a long and distinct 
tradition as well as a clearly defined material habitat 
which embodies and symbolises its traditions in a thou- 
sand different ways, has raised the self-knowledge and 
sentiment of the groups to a high level. It is well known 
that the few years spent in one of the colleges develops 
in every member (with few exceptions) a sentiment of 
attachment that persists through life and extends itself in 
some degree to every other member, past, present, and 
future; so that, in whatever part of the world and imder 
whatever circumstances two such men may meet, the 
discovery of their common membership of the college at 
once throws them into a friendly attitude towards each 
other and prepares each to make disinterested efforts on 
behalf of the other. 

The same is true in a less degree of the imiversities 
themselves. Oxford and Cambridge have, partly in con- 
sequence of their proximity and close intercourse, devel- 
oped on closely parallel lines. They are therefore so 
similar in constitution and aims as to be keen though 
friendly rivals. This has been of great benefit to both, 
^he self-knowledge and group sentiment of each having 
been greatly promoted by this close intercourse, rivalry, 
$jnd reciprocal criticism. And this rivalry has not pre- 
vented the growth of some sentiment for the larger group 
constituted by the members of both imiversities, each of 
whom is always ready to defend the common interests of 
the larger group against the rest of the world. 

Again, within each college there are numerous smaller 
groups, each with its traditions and group spirit; and, so 



Peculiarities of Groups 131 

long as these groups do not become too exclusive, do not 
absorb all the devotion of their members, but leave each 
one free to join in the life of other minor groups, their 
influence is good, the group spirit of each such minor group 
contributing to the strength of the. larger group sentiment 
and enriching the spiritual life of the whole. 

In the middle ages occupational groups were of great 
importance and influence. They were of the mixed type, 
for most of them, though essentially purposive, developed 
strong traditions ; and in their remote origins many of them 
were perhaps rather natural than artificial formations. 
The violent changes of industrial life, the development of 
the capitalist system and modern industrialism, dislocated 
and largely destroyed these occupational groups to the 
great detriment of social well-being. At the present time 
we see a strong tendency to the growth of occupational 
groups of the purely purposive type, which, lacking the 
guidance and conservative power of old traditions, and 
depending for their strength largely upon the identification 
of the material interests of each member with those of the 
group, show a narrowness of outlook, a lack of stability and 
internal cohesion, and a tendency to ignore the place and 
function of the group in the whole community. They 
show, in short, a lack of the enlightened group spirit which 
only time, with increasing experience and understanding 
of the nature and fimctions of group life, can remedy. It 
may be hoped that with improved internal organisation, 
with the growth of more insight into the mutual depend- 
ence of the various groups on one another and on the 
whole community, these groups, which at present seem to 
some observers to threaten to destroy our society and to 
replace the rivalry of nations by an even more dangerous 
rivalry of vast occupational groups, may become organised 
within the structure of the whole and play a part of the 
greatest value in the national life. 



PART II 

THE NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER 



133 



I 



CHAPTER VI 

Introductory 

What is a Nation? 

HAVING studied the most general principles of the 
collective mental life, as exemplified in the two 
extreme forms of the unorganised crowd and the 
highly organised army, having briefly noted the principal 
classes of groups that enjoy a collective mental life, and 
having examined the nature and function of the group 
spirit in the organisation of the group mind, we may now 
take up the study of the most interesting, most complex, \y 
and most important kind of group mind, namely the mind 
of a nation-state. ' 

Many attempts have been made to define more exactly 
the popular notion of a nation. The word has sometimes 
been applied to large groups of primitive folk that show 
evidence of close racial affinity and similarity of customs, 
such as the Iroquois tribes of North America, or the Hun 
invaders of medieval Europe. In popular usage the word 
is more commonly restricted to the great nation-states of 
modern times. It must be recognised that, since human 
societies of present and past times present every conceiv- 
able variety of composition and structure, it is impracti- 

» For a brief history of the nation-state the reader may be referred to 
Prof. Ramsay Muir's Nationalism and Internationalism, London, 19 1 7. 
He rightly describes "nationalism" as one of the most powerful factors in 
modem history. It is, I think, obviously true that we may go further and 
say that it is the most powerful factor in modem history. 

135 



136 National Mind and Character 

cable to lay down any strict definition and to classify 
populations as falling definitely within or outside the 
class. 

But, though we may not hope to lay down a definition 
which shall clearly mark off the nation from all other 
human groups, we may usefully define the nation-state 
or nation in the most highly developed form that it has 
yet attained, and recognise that various peoples partake 
of the nature of, or approach the type of, the nation in so 
far as they exhibit something of its essential character. 

It is perhaps hardly necessary to point out that it is 
only in the nation-state, or nation in the fullest sense of the 
word, that the state becomes identical with the nation, 
and that this identification has only been achieved in 
modern history by the growth among a few peoples of 
representative institutions and the democratic spirit. 

In the work mentioned above Prof. Ramsay Muir 
writes — ''What do we mean by a Nation? It is obviously 
not the same thing as a race, and not the same thing as a 
state. It may be provisionally defined as a body of people 
who feel themselves to be naturally linked together by 
certain affinities which are so strong and real for them that 
they can live happily together, are dissatisfied when dis- 
united, and cannot tolerate subjection to peoples who do 
not share these ties."^ The provisional definition has the 
merit of recognising that nationhood is essentially a mental 
condition and must be defined in psychological terms. 
The author goes on to inquire — "What are the ties of 
affinity which are necessary to constitute a nation?" He 
then considers the following conditions: (i) ''occupation 
of a defined geographical area," (2) "unity of race," (3) 
"unity of language," (4) "unity of religion," (5) "common 
subjection, during a long stretch of time, to a firm and 
systematic government," (6) "community of economic 

» Op. cit.y p. 38. 



What Is a Nation? 137 

interest, with the similarity of occupations and outlook 
which it brings," (7) "the possession of a common tradi- 
tion, a memory of sufferings endured and victories won in 
common, expressed in song and legend, in the dear names 
of great personalities that seem to embody in themselves 
the character and ideals of the nation, in the names also of 
sacred places wherein the national memory is enshrined," 
Of the last he says that it is ''the most potent of all nation- 
moulding factors, the one indispensable factor"; thus 
showing his sense of the essentially psychological nature 
of nationhood. But of all the other six ''factors" enu- 
merated, he shows that they .are unessential. After reach- 
ing this negative conclusion, that nationhood cannot be 
defined by any one of these marks or factors, he writes: 
"Nationality, then, is an elusive idea, difficult to define. 
It cannot be tested or analysed by formulae, such as Ger- 
man professors love. Least of all must it be interpreted 
by the brutal and childish doctrine of racialism. Its 
essence is a sentiment, and in the last resort we can only 
say that a nation is a nation because its members passion- 
ately and unanimously believe it to be so. But they can 
only believe it to be so if there exist among them real and 
strong affinities ; if they are not divided by any artificially 
maintained separation between the mixed races from 
which they are sprung; if they share a common basis of 
fundamental moral ideas, such as are most easily im- 
planted by common religious beliefs ; if they can glory in a 
common inheritance of tradition; and their nationality 
will be all the stronger if to these sources of unity they add 
a common language and literature and a common body of 
law. If these ties, or the majority of them, are lacking, 
the assertion of nationality cannot be made good. For, 
even if it be for the moment shared by the whole people, as 
soon as they begin to try to enjoy the freedom and unity 
which they claim in the name of nationality, they will fall 



138 National Mind and Character 

asunder, and their freedom will be their ruin." In the 
last sentence the author clearly shows that the conclusion 
at which he seemed to have arrived, namely that **a 
nation is a nation because its members passionately and 
unanimously believe it to be so," is imtenable. At the 
present time there are populations claiming the rights of 
nationality just upon this fallacious ground; a fact which 
illustrates the importance of achieving some satisfactory 
definition of nationhood. Indeed at the present moment, 
when Europe is being remoulded by the Paris Conference, 
the need for clear notions and some working definition of 
nationhood has acquired a most urgent importance. For, 
as our author remarks, "we say, loosely, that every na- 
tion has a right to freedom and unity," and the principle 
of "self-determination of nations" has become almost uni- 
versally accepted as a kind of moral axiom of political 
justice; and this axiom is being applied to determine the 
political boundaries of the world now and for all time. 
Yet how can we hope to make a proper use of this principle, 
if we cannot define a nation, if a modern historian, who has 
devoted himself to the study of nationality, finds himself 
compelled in the year 191 7 to give up the attempt to define 
the meaning of the term nation? For that is the issue of 
Prof. Ramsay Muir's interesting discussion. "We have 
not attained," he confesses, "in this discussion any very 
clear definition of nationality, or any very satisfactory test 
of the validity of the claims put forward for national free- 
dom. We are not to base the doctrine of nationality upon 
abstract rights. We must recognise that there is no 
single infallible test of what constitutes a nation, imless it 
be the peoples' own conviction of their nationhood, and 
even this may be mistaken or based upon inadequate 
grounds."' And the dire consequences of this failure are 
made clear on the following page — "There seems no escape 



What Is a Nation? 139 

from the conclusion that nationhood must mainly deter- 
mine itself by conflict. That conclusion appears to be 
the moral of the history of the national idea in Europe." 
Which is as much as to say that, when any population 
declares itself to be a nation and claims the rights of 
nationhood, the Statesmen of the Paris Conference are to 
reply — "We do not know whether your claim is well- 
founded; for the historians and political philosophers 
cannot tell us the meaning of the word 'nation.' Go to 
and fight, and, if you survive, we shall recognise the 
fait accompli and hail you a Nation." 

I have dwelt at some length on this perplexity of the 
historian, grappling with the task of defining nationhood 
because it illustrates so well a fact on which I wish to in- 
sist — namely, that it is not sufficient for the historian and 
the political philosopher to be willing to recognise the 
mental factors in the phenomena with which he deals. 
It is necessary to recognise that these factors are of 
overwhelming importance and that they cannot be satis- 
factorily dealt with by aid of the obscure and confused 
psychological concepts of popular thought and speech. We 
must recognise these political problems for what they 
truly are — namely, psychological through and through, 
and only to be attacked with some hope of success if we 
call to our aid all that psychological science can give us. 
This conclusion cannot fail to be unpalatable to very 
many workers in this field; for it implies that equipment 
for such work demands some additional years of prepara- 
tory study. But, it may fairly be asked, if the medical 
man must devote six years to the intensive study of the 
human body, before he is permitted to practise upon it, 
and even then without any scientific knowledge of the 
human mind, should not he who would practise upon the 
body politic, in which not merely the bodies but the minds 
of men interact in the most subtle and complex fashion, 



140 National Mind and Character 

prepare himself for his exalted task by an even more 
extended cotirse of study? 

Prof. Ramsay Muir has the merit of recognising the 
essentially psychological nature of his problem; for his 
provisional definition (cited above) is wholly psychological, 
and he tells us that the essence of nationality is a sentiment; 
but he reveals the inadequacy of his psychological equip- 
ment by telling us in the same paragraph that its essence 
is a belief, the belief that they are a nation, passionately 
and unanimously held by the members of some group. If 
we look again at the list of seven proposed marks of nation- 
hood, we shall see that they are rather of the natiure of 
conditions favourable to the growth of nationhood; and, 
as we shall find, this list may be considerably enlarged. 
He comes nearest to the truth perhaps when he says "its 
essence is a sentiment." But he does not attempt to tell 
us what is the nature of this sentiment, nor even what is 
its object. 

We may imagine a group of people of considerable 
magnitude, say the Mormons, or the Doukhobors, the 
Swedenborgians, or the Christian Scientists, withdrawing 
themselves to some defined territory, in order to form 
themselves into a nation; then, although each of the seven 
conditions enumerated by Prof. Ramsay Muir might be 
realised, and even though the community possessed the 
two conditions described by him as the essence of nation- 
ality — namely, a strong sentiment (presumably one of 
loyalty to the group) and a passionate belief in its nation- 
ality — it would, in the absence of other essential conditions, 
lamentably fall short of being a nation and would suffer 
the fate indicated; namely "as soon as they begin to try 
to enjoy the freedom and unity which they claim in the 
name of nationality, they will fall asunder, and their free- 
dom will be their ruin." ^ 

^Op.ciL.p. 51. 



i 



What Is a Nation? 141 

What, then, is the essential condition for lack of which 
any such people would fall short of nationhood? What is 
the factor which has escaped the analysis of Prof. Ramsay 
Muir? The answer must be — organisation; not material 
organisation, but such mental organisation as will render 
the group capable of effective group life, of collective 
deliberation and collective volition. The answer to the 
riddle of the definition of nationhood is to be found in the 
conception of the group mind. A nation, we must say, is 
a people or population enjoying some degree of political 
independence and possessed of a national mind and char- 
acter, and therefore capable of national deliberation and 
national volition. In this and the succeeding chapters we 
have to examine the nature of such national mind and 
character, to give fuller meaning to these vague popular 
terms, and to study the way in which various conditions 
of national life contribute to their development. 

Nationhood is, then, essentially a psychological con- 
ception. To investigate the nature of national mind and 
character and to examine the conditions that render pos- 
sible the formation of the national mind and tend to con- 
solidate national character, these are the crowning tasks of 
psychology. 

Let me remind the reader at this point of the general 
sense of the words mind and character. The two words 
really cover the same content; when we speak of the in- 
dividual mind or character, we mean the organised system 
of mental or pyschical forces which expresses itself in the 
behaviour and the consciousness of the individual man. 
Any such organised system has two aspects or sides which, 
though intimately related, may be considered abstractly 
as distinct — namely, the intellectual or cognitive aspect 
and the volitional, conative, or affective aspect. When 
we use the word "mind" in speaking of any such system, 
we give prominence to its intellectual side; when we say 



142 National Mind and Character 

"character" we draw attention to its conative or affective 
side. The group mind of a nation is a mind in the sense 
that, like the mind of the individual, it is an organised 
system of mental or psychical forces; and, like the in- 
dividual mind, it also has its intellectual and its affective 
sides or aspects. And this remains true whether or no 
there be any truth in that notion of the "collective con- 
sciousness" as a synthesis of minor consciousnesses which 
we have provisionally rejected;* that is to say, we accept 
unreservedly the notion of the collective mind, while 
suspending judgment upon the notion of "collective con- 
sciousness," imtil we shall find that this hypothesis is, or 
is not, required for the interpretation of the facts. 

It will be observed that we are getting far away from the 
old-fashioned conception of psychology which limited its 
province to the introspective description of the contents of 
the individual's consciousness. The wider conception of the 
science gives it new tasks and new branches, of which 
the study of the national mind is one. Like the main 
trunk of psychology and most of its branches, this branch 
has to become an empirical science which shall take the 
place of what has long been regarded as a branch of specu- 
lative philosophy and pursued by the deductive a priori 
methods of philosophy. In this case the branch of 
philosophy in question has generally been called the 
Philosophy of History. It has been well said by Fotiillee 
that the Philosophy of History of the past is related to the 
psychological social science, that is now beginning to take 
shape, as alchemy was related to chemistry, or astrology 
to astronomy. That is to say, it was a realm of obscure 
and fanciful ideas, of sweeping and ill-based assumptions 
and slipshod reasoning. It was an elaborate attempt "to 

» Chapter II. On the question of the definition of the terms "mind" and 
"character" I would refer the reader to my Psychology, The Study oj Bt* 
kaviour. Home University Library. 



What Is a Nation? 143 

lay the intellect to rest on a pillow of obscure ideas." 
The task of scientific analysis and research was avoided by 
bringing in, as the main explanatory principles or causal 
agencies, vaguely conceived entities regarded as presiding 
over the development of peoples — such entities as Provi- 
dence, or the Destiny of nations, the Genius of a people, or 
the Instinct of a nation, the Unconscious Soul of a people, 
or the Spirit of the Age; and, when the problem was to 
account for some great secular change, for example, some 
change of national character, nothing was commoner than 
to appeal to Time itself, and thus to make of this most 
empty of all abstractions a directive agency and an all 
powerful cause of change. The strictly national gods of 
various nations were popular conceptions of this order; 
the gods who directly intervened in battles and enabled 
their chosen peoples to smite their enemies hip and thigh 
so that not one was left alive. Of this class the "good old 
German god" of the late German emperor was, it may be 
hoped, the last example. 

In a less crude form similar hypotheses of direct super- 
natural intervention have been seriously maintained in 
modern times. Thus the poet Schiller argued as follows — 
**The individuals of whom a nation is composed are dom- 
inated by egoism, each seeking only his own good, yet 
their actions somehow secure the good of the whole; hence 
we must believe that the history of a people unrolls itself 
beneath the glance of a wisdom that looks on from afar, 
that knows how to control the ill-regulated caprices of 
liberty by the laws of a directing necessity and to make the 
particular ends pvu-sued by individuals subservient to the 
imconscious realisation of a general plan." 

In estimating the claims to consideration of a doctrine 
of this sort, we must put aside its deleterious moral effects, 
the fact that its acceptance would necessarily tend to 
weaken our sense of responsibility, to paralyse altruistic 



144 National Mind and Character 

effort, and to justify purely egoistic conduct. We have 
to consider only its truth or probability in the light of 
history. When we do that, it appears merely as a ficti- 
tious solution of the larger problems of social science, a 
solution which may relieve us of the necessity of intellec- 
tual effort, but which brings no enlightenment and is 
supported by no serious argument. The one argument 
advanced is a libel on human nature; for it denies the 
reality and efficacy of the disinterested social efforts of 
the leaders of humanity, to which its progress has been 
in the main due; and it ignores the great mass of human 
activity due to the group spirit with its fusion of egoistic 
and altruistic motives. Further, it ignores the fact that 
the history of the world is not merely the history of the 
rise of nations, but rather of the perpetual rise and fall 
of nations. When we are told that a power of this sort 
has constantly intervened in the course of history, and 
that the rise of peoples has been due to its guidance, we 
may fairly ask — ^Why has it repeatedly withdrawn its 
support, just when civilisation has achieved such a degree 
of development as might have rendered possible the 
flowering of all the finer capacities of human nature and 
the alleviation of the hard lot of the great mass of men? 
If the contemplation of the course of history compelled us 
to believe that such a power intervenes, we should cer- 
tainly have to regard it as a malign power that delights 
in mocking human efforts by first encouraging and then 
bringing them to naught. 

Very similar is the role in history assigned by von Hart- 
mann to his ' * Unconscious. " "It carries away the peoples 
that it dominates," says von Hartmann, "with a demoniac 
power towards unknown ends; it teaches them the way 
that they must take ; though they often believe themselves 
to be marching towards a goal very different from that to 
which they are being conducted." 



What Is a Nation? 145 

Others maintain that the great men of a nation, who are 
the principal agents in moulding its destiny, are in some 
mystical sense the products and expressions of the ''un- 
conscious soul" of the people, that they are the means by 
which its ideas are realised, through which they become 
effective; and they usually make the assertion, altogether 
unwarranted by history, that the moment of great need 
in the life of a people always produces a great man or hero 
to lead the people through the crisis. That is, or may 
appear to be, true of those peoples that have survived to 
pass into history. But what of those peoples that have 
gone down, leaving no trace of all their strivings, beyond 
some mounds of rubble, some few material monuments, or 
some strange marks on brick or stone or rock? 

All such assumptions are the very negation of science. 
We have no right to appeal to such obscure and mystical 
powers, until by prolonged effort we shall have exhausted 
the possibilities of understanding and explanation in terms 
of known forces and conditions. ' 

On the other hand, a number of writers have sought to 
interpret the course of history and the rise and fall of 
nations in a more scientific manner; but most of these have 
studied some one aspect of national life, and have pro- 
fessed to find in that one aspect the key which shall unlock 
all doors and solve all problems. Thi^s some, adopting 
the notion of a variety of hirnian races, each endowed with 
a certain peculiar and unalterable combination of qualities, 
seek to explain all history by the aid of biological laws, 
especially the Darwinian principles, as a struggle for sur- 
vival between individuals and between races. Others, 
like Karl Marx and Guizot, see in economic conditions and 
the struggles between the social classes within each nation, 

' Prof. Hans Driesch's conception of "super-individual entelechy" seems 
to be of this order, arrived at by the same Hne of reasoning. See Science and 
Philosophy of the Organism, Giiford Lectures, 1907. 



146 National Mind auid Character 

the all-important factors. Others again, like Montesqmeu 
and to some extent Buckle and more recently Matteuzzi, 
have seen in the influences of physical environment the 
key to the understanding of differences of national char- 
acter and history; while others profess to have found it in 
differences of religious system, or of the forms of govern- 
ment and systems of laws. Others again, like Le Bon, ' 
in a few dominant ideas which, they say, being possessed 
by any nation (or possessing a nation) determine its char- 
acter and civilisation. All these are exaggerations of 
partial truths; and in opposition to all of them it must be 
laid down that the understanding of the mind of a nation 
is an indispensable foundation for the interpretation of its 
history. 

Just as there are two kinds of psychology of individuals, 
so there are two kinds of psychology of peoples. There 
is the individual psychology which is primarily descriptive, 
which is the biography of persons, and whose aim is to 
impart an accurate conception of the general tendencies of 
a person and of the course of his development. And there 
is the psychology whose aim is to explain in general terms 
the conduct of individual men in general by the aid of 
conceptions and laws of general validity. The former, of 
course, was developed much earlier than the latter, which 
is in the main of quite modern growth. As this explana- 
tory psychology develops, its principles begin to find 
application in the sphere of biographical or individual 
psychology, raising it also to the explanatory plane. 

Just so there are two parallel kinds of psychology of 
peoples. There is the descriptive psychology of the 
tendencies of particular peoples, the biography of nations 
and peoples, which is what commonly is meant by "his- 
tory'*; and there is the psychology which seeks to explain 
in general terms how these tendencies arise, which seeks 

' Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples. 



What Is a Nation? 147 

the general laws of which these diverse national tendencies 
are the outcome. 

This last is the modern science which is beginning to take 
shape and to undertake the task so inadequately dealt 
with by the so-called Philosophy of History. It is essen- 
tially a branch, and by far the most important part, of 
Group Psychology.* Now individual psychology tends 
more and more to be a genetic psychology; because we do 
not feel that we really understand the individual mind, 
until we know how it has come to be what it is, until we 
know something of its development and racial evolution. 
Just so the explanatory psychology of peoples must be a 
genetic psychology. Here it differs from individual 
psychology in that the distinction between individual 
development and racial evolution disappears. For the 
national mind is a continuous growth ; it is not embodied in 
a temporal succession of individuals, but in a single con- 
tinuously evolving organism. 

Nevertheless, we may with advantage consider sepa- 
rately (i) the nature of the general conditions necessary to 
the existence and operation of a national mind; (2) the 
processes of evolution by which such minds are formed and 
their peculiarities acquired. I propose to take up the 
former problem in the following chapter. 

» As examples of the best work as yet accomplished in this immense and 
fascinating field, I would refer the reader to the books of M. Alfred Fouill^e 
one of the most clear-sighted, judicious, and readable of modern philo- 
sophers, especially his Psychologic des peuples europeens, his Psychologie du 
PeuplefrangaiSf and his Science Sociale Contemporaine. 



CHAPTER VII 
The Mind of a Nation 

WE have prepared ourselves for the study of the 
national mind by our preliminary examination 
of the two extreme types of collective mental life, 
that of the quite unorganised group, the simple crowd, on 
the one hand, that of a very highly organised group, the 
army, on the other hand. We have seen that in the former 
type the collective actions imply a collective mental life 
much inferior, both intellectually and morally, to that of 
the average component individuals; and that in the other 
type they imply a collective mental life and capacities 
much superior to those of the average individual. 

The mind of any nation occupies some intermediate 
position in the scale of which these are the extreme types; 
and it differs from both in being immensely more complex, 
and also in that the influence of the past dominates and 
determines to a much greater extent the mental life of the 
present. 

The study we have already made of collective mental 
life will enable us to understand what we mean, or ought 
to mean, when we speak of national character. There are 
two senses in which this phrase is used, and they are often 
confused. On the one hand, the phrase may be used to 
denote the character of individuals who are taken to be 
typical representatives or average specimens of their na- 
tions. On the other hand, it may be taken to mean the 
character of the nation as a collective whole or mind 

148 _ 



The Mind of a Nation 149 

These two things are by no means the same; they are 
rather very different. We saw that this was true in the 
case of the crowd and also of the army ; and it is true in a 
still higher degree of the nation than of any other social 
aggregate, just because the influence of its past over its 
present is greater than in any of the others. It is in the 
second and preferable sense that Fouillee uses this expres- 
sion. He writes — "The national character is not the 
simple sum of the individual characters. In the bosom 
of a strongly organised nation, there are necessarily pro- 
duced reciprocal actions between the individuals Which 
issue in a general manner of feeling, thinking, and willing 
very different from that of the individuals existing in 
isolation, or even from the sum or resultant of all the men- 
tal actions of isolated individuals. The national character 
is not simply the average type which one would obtain 
if one could imitate for minds the procedure adopted by 
Galton in the case of faces and so obtain a collective or 
generic image. The face which the process of compound 
photography produces exerts no action and is not a cause ; 
while the national spirit does exert an effect which is 
different from all effects of individual minds; it is capable 
of exerting a sort of pressure and a constraint upon the 
individuals themselves; it is not only an effect, but is also 
in turn a cause; it is not only fashioned by individuals, it 
fashions them in turn. The average type of the French- 
man existing to-day, for example, does not adequately 
represent the French national character, because each 
people has a history, and ancient traditions, and is com- 
posed, as it is said, of the dead even more than of the living. 
The French national character resumes the physical and 
social actions that have been taking place through cen- 
turies, independently of the present generation, and im- 
poses itself upon this generation through all the national 
ideas, the national sentiments and national institutions. 



150 National Mind and Character 

It is the weight of the entire history to which the individual 
is subjected in his relations with his fellow citizens. Just, 
then, as the nation, as a certain social group, has an exist- 
ence different from (though not separable from) the exist- 
ence of the individuals, so the national character implies 
that particular combination of mental forces of which the 
national life is the external manifestation."' That is a 
precise and admirable statement of what we are to under- 
stand by national mind and character. 

We must now consider in turn the principal conditions 
of the existence of highly developed national mind and 
character, and first those which, as we have seen, are 
essential to all collective mental life. 

A certain degree of mental homogeneity of the group, 
some similarity of mental constitution of the individuals 
composing it, is the prime condition. The homogeneity 
essential to a nation may be one of two kinds, native or 
acquired; both of these are usually combined, but one of 
them predominates in some nations, the other in others. 

In considering racial or native homogeneity, we touch 
upon one aspect of a much disputed question, the influence 
of race on national character and history, in regard to 
which the greatest diversity of opinion has prevailed and 
still prevails. A correct estimate of this influence is of 
fimdamental importance. I have stated elsewhere the 
view I take, ^ but we must consider the question more fully 
here. On the one hand are those who would explain all 
differences of national character and action, all success and 
failure of nations, as arising from racial composition. 
This view is the basis of much of the ill-founded national 
pessimism which, before the Great War, was widely preva- 
lent among the peoples who speak the Romance or Latin 
languages and who are falsely called by these pessimists 

* Psychologic du peuplejrangais, p. 4, Paris, 1903. 
» Social Psychology, p. 330. 



The Mind of a Nation 151 

the Latin races. It was also the foundation of that over- 
weening national pride which has corrupted the German 
people and led them to disgrace and disaster; for, following 
Gobineau' and a host of his disciples, among whom H. S. 
Chamberlain is perhaps the most notorious, they had 
come to believe, against the most obvious and abundant 
evidence, that they were the purest representatives of a 
race from whose blood all great men and all good things 
have come, a race fitted by native superiority to rule all 
the peoples of the earth. ^ 

On the other hand, popular humanitarianism would 
regard all men and all races as alike and equal in respect of 
native endowment; and we have seen so distinguished a 
sociologist as Durkheim denying any importance or in- 
fluence to racial composition of a people. Many others 
put aside all explanations based on racial differences as 
cheap and meretricious means of avoiding difficulties. 
J. S. Mill, for example, wrote "Of all vulgar modes of 
escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and 
moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is 
that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character 
to inherent natural differences"; and Buckle, in his great 
work on the History of Civilisatiofiy quoted this remark 
with cordial approval. ^ 

Both these extreme views are false; the truth lies some- 
where in the midst between them. At the time when Mill 
and Buckle wrote, biology and anthropology had not 
shown, as now they have, the enormous power of heredity 
in determining individual character and the great persist- 
ence of innate qualities through numberless generations. 

* Les inegalites des races humaines. 

* This fantastic doctrine has found its fullest expression in Chamberlain's 
work The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. 

' Other prominent exponents of this view are Mr. J. M. Robertson in his 
book The Germans and in his Introduction to English Politics ^ and M.J. Finot 
in his Race Prejudice. 



152 National Mind and Character 

Buckle especially overrated the power of physical environ" 
ment, and Mill the power of education and of social 
environment, to change the innate qualities of a people; 
and it was this overestimation that led them, and leads 
others still, to underestimate the importance of racial 
composition. There are involved in this dispute two 
theses which are often confused together. When people 
speak of the influence of "race" on national character and 
institutions, they may, and sometimes do, mean by "race" 
the sum of innate inborn qualities or tendencies of the 
people at any given point of history. On the other hand, 
by influence of race they may mean the influence of the 
prehistoric races which have entered into the social com- 
position of the nation — that is, those races from which its 
population is descended. Some authors mean to deny 
importance to race in both these senses; Buckle and Mill 
and Durkheim meant, I think, to deny it in both, because 
they believed that human nattn-e is very plastic and easily 
moulded as regards its innate qualities by its environment ; 
they believed that, if only a system of institutions, es- 
pecially educational institutions, adapted to promote the 
intellectual and moral development of each generation of 
a people, can be established among it, then the influence 
of such institutions will so vastly predominate over that 
of innate qualities that these become a neghgible quantity. 
From this it would follow that we should expect to see any 
two or more populations endowed with similar institutions 
form nations of similar character which will continue to 
develop along similar lines, except in so far as minor un- 
essential differences of physical environment produce 
differences of modes of occupation, dress, food, and so 
forth. 

This view of the insignificance of innate qualities was in 
harmony with, and was determined by, the dominant 
psychological doctrine of the time; the view which came 



The Mind of a Nation 153 

down from Locke, according to which the mind of the new- 
born individual is a tabula rasa, entirely similar in all men, 
without specific tendencies and peculiarities of any im- 
portance, on which individual experience impresses itself, 
moulding all its development according to the principle of 
the association of ideas. 

This doctrine, explicitly or implicitly adopted, has 
played a great part in determining British policy in its 
relations with British dependencies and their populations, 
notably India. It is a striking example of the way in 
which theory affects practice, and of the danger of our 
profound indifference to theory; we are influenced by it^ 
though we pretend to ignore it. It is well to make our- 
selves clear as to what theories we hold, even if we do not 
allow our practice to be governed by them exclusively. 

There are commonly confused together, under the head 
of the influence of race on national character, three pro- 
blems which must be disentangled. 

(i) Are there differences of innate mental constitution 
between the various branches of mankind? 

(2) If there are such differences, are these important for 
national life? Do they in any considerable degree deter- 
mine national character? Or are they capable of being 
swamped and submerged and altogether overridden by 
the moulding influences brought to bear by environment 
on each generation? 

(3) If such innate differences exist, what degree of 
permanence do they possess? Do they persist through 
thousands of years, in spite of vast changes of physical or 
cultural conditions? Or may they undergo considerable 
modification or complete transformation in the course of 
a few generations ? 

These are questions of fundamental importance. And 
they admit of no positive clean-cut answers at the present 
time. They offer vast fields for research, and only when 



154 National Mind and Character 

prolonged research shall have been directed to them shall 
we be able to answer them positively. 

In the past, since their importance could not' be alto- 
gether overlooked, it has been usual to dispose of them by 
dogmatically asserting one extreme view and pouring 
scornful epithets upon the other extreme view. A prin- 
cipal task for science in its present stage is to define the 
questions clearly. It is not possible, perhaps, to keep 
them quite separate; for, if there are considerable differ- 
ences of innate mental constitution, then their importance 
for national character must depend greatly upon their 
degree of permanence; and, again, there is the great dif- 
ficulty of distinguishing between innate and acquired mental 
qualities in any individual and still more in groups. 

Nevertheless, we may safely say that both extreme views 
in regard to race, the positive and the negative, are gross 
exaggerations, plausible only while we ignore one part of 
the evidence; the truth lies in between somewhere. 

There can, I think, be no reasonable doubt that there 
are great differences between races, and that these may be, 
and in many cases have been, persistent through thou- 
sands of generations. 

The recognition that the mind of the himian infant is 
not a tabula rasa, but that its innate constitution comprises 
a ntunber of instincts, specifically directed tendencies to 
thought, feeling, and action, prepares us to accept this 
view and gives us some basis for the definition of these 
differences. Whether all differences can be defined in 
such terms is a further problem. That they cannot be 
wholly defined in this way seems to be obvious, when we 
consider how quite specialised idiosyncrasies are trans- 
mitted in families through several generations, often with 
a leap across one generation, peculiarities of taste and 
feeling, of aesthetic endowment and temperament, abili- 
ties such as the musical, mathematical, and artistic. 



The Mind of a Nation 155 

When we compare widely different peoples such as the 
Negro, the White, and the Yellow, the fact of profound 
differences cannot be overlooked. These differences can- 
not be ascribed to the action of environment upon each 
generation. Perhaps the only differences of this kind 
which at present are accurately measurable are those of the 
size and form of the brain. The negro brain is decidedly 
smaller than that of the white and yellow races. And 
there are small but distinct differences of sensory endow- 
nient which are highly significant. For, if there are 
racial differences in these most fundamental and racially 
oldest endowments, we may expect still greater differences 
in the later evolved powers of the mind; although these 
are much more difficult to detect and define. 

Still, the negro race wherever found does present certain 
specific mental peculiarities roughly definable, especially 
the happy-go-lucky disposition, the unrestrained emo- 
tional violence and responsiveness, whether its representa- 
tives are found in tropic Africa, in the jungles of Papua, or 
in the highly civilised conditions of American cities. 

The Semitic stock again is one which, though widely 
scattered, seems to present certain constant peculiarities. 
And among closely allied branches of the white race of 
similar culture, we can hardly refuse to recognise innate 
differences. Differences of temperament are, perhaps, 
the clearest and the most generally recognised, even be- 
tween peoples of allied stock and similar civilisation. Who 
can question that Irishmen in general are very different 
from Englishmen in temperament, that they are less 
phlegmatic, more easily moved to joy, or sorrow, or en- 
thusiasm, more easily touched by poetry, have a more 
varied and lively emotional experience? That this is an 
innate racial difference seems clear; for it can be accounted 
for in no other way, and it obtains in some degree between 
all commxmities of similar racial stocks, in spite of simi- 



156 National Mind and Character 

laxities or differences of history and of present conditions. 
For example, similar differences, roughly definable as the 
difference between the so-called Celtic temperament and 
the Anglo-Saxon, seem evidently to obtain between the 
Breton and the Norman, who represent in the main the 
same two stocks. 

And, even in intellectual quality, there appear to be not 
only differences of degree, but also differences of kind, 
inexpHcable save as racial differences. The logical de- 
ductive tendencies of the French intellect and the empiri- 
cal inductive tendency of the English, seem to be rooted 
in race; though here of course tradition accumulates and 
accentuates such differences from generation to generation. 

But the best evidence of persirtent innate differences is 
afforded by differences and similarities expressed in na- 
tional life which cannot be accounted for in any other way. 
The innate differences and peculiarities of individuals are 
largely obscured by these national characteristics. And 
the more highly organised the collective life of any people, 
the more clearly will it express their racial qualities. 

The social environment in a developed nation is in 
harmony with the individual innate tendencies, because 
in the main it is the natural outcome and expression of 
those tendencies. For, throughout the history of such a 
nation, the elements of its social environment — its cus- 
toms, beUefs, institutions, language, its culture in general 
— have been slow^ly evolved under the steady pressure of 
the individual innate tendencies, which in each succeed- 
ing generation are the same. A part of this culture is of 
native origin; a part, in every European nation probably 
by far the larger part, is of foreign origin, and has been 
acquired by the acceptance of ideas and behefs from with- 
out its borders, by the copying of institutions, customs, 
arts, from foreign models. In both cases the idea or cus- 
tom or other cultural element only becomes embodied in 



The Mind of a Nation 157 

the national culture through widespread or general 
imitation. ' 

In the case of elements of native origin, it is by imita- 
tion of the individuals of original powers of thought or 
feeling that the element becomes embodied in the national 
culture; in the case of foreign elements, by imitation of 
foreign models, acceptance of foreign ideas, through litera- 
ture and personal contacts. In both cases, such general 
imitation will only take place when the culttire-element in 
question is more or less congenial to the innate qualities of 
the bulk of individuals. All other novel elements will be 
ignored, or will fail to propagate themselves successfully; 
if they obtain a first footing, they will fail to pass beyond 
the stage of fashion into that of custom. And, when once 
accepted, the cultural element will usually undergo modi- 
fication in the direction of more complete harmony with 
the innate tendencies; its less congenial features will be 
allowed to die out, its more congenial will be accentuated 
from generation to generation. 

The social environment of any civilised people is, then, 
very largely the result of a long continued process of selec- 
tion, comparable with the natural selection by which, 
according to the Darwinian theory, animal species are 
evolved; a constant favouring of certain elements, a con- 
stant rejection of others. We may in fact regard each 
distinctive type of civilisation as a species, evolved largely 
by selection; and the selective agency, which corresponds 
to and plays a part analogous to the part of the physical 
environment of an animal species, is the innate mental 
constitution of the people. The simi of innate qualities is 
the environment of the culture-species, and it effects a 
selection among all culture variations, determining the 

'I here use this word in the large, loose, and convenient sense in which it 
is used by M. Tarde in his Lois de Vimitation. I have examined the nature 
of imitative processes more closely in my Social Psychology. 



1 58 National Mind and Character 

survival and further evolution of some, the extermination 
of others. And, just as animal species (especially men) 
modify their physical environment in course of time, and 
also devise means of sheltering themselves from its selec- 
tive influence, so each national life, each species of civilisa- 
tion, modifies very gradually the innate qualities of the 
people and builds up institutions which, the more firmly 
they are established and the more fully they are elabo- 
rated, override and prevent the more completely the direct 
influence of innate qualities on national life. 

These principles are illustrated, perhaps, most clearly 
by the spread and modification of religious systems among 
peoples of different races. Take the case of the Moslem 
religion, which has gained acceptance among one-sixth of 
the population of the world in historic and in fact recent 
times, and is still spreading. The leading feature of this 
system is its acceptance of all that is and happens as being 
the will of God, the act of an entirely arbitrary, inscrutable, 
and absolutely powerful individual, before which men 
must simply bow without question or criticism; it is 
characterised by its simplicity and its fatalism. There 
seems good reason to believe that the tendency to un- , 
questioning obedience to authority is a strong innate | 
tendency of most Asiatics (except perhaps the Chinese and 
their relatives), far stronger than in most individuals of 
European peoples; for we see it expressed in many ways in 
their institutions and history, both of those who are and 
those who are not Moslems;^ and Asiatic fatalism has, in 
fact, become proverbial. With the causes or origin of this 
innate quality we are not now concerned; but, accepting it 
as a fact, we may note that it is among Asiatics that 
Mohammedanism has secured the great mass of its con- 
verts; and that in India, in spite of many minor features 

* Meredith Townsend regards this as one of the leading qualities of the 
peoples of India. See Europe and Asia, London, 1901. 



I 



The Mind of a Nation 159 

that are opposed to the spirit of Hindooism, it continues 
to spread largely; while Christianity makes but little 
progress. Buddhism on the other hand has almost faded 
away, after an initial success in the country of its origin, 
but has continued to gain adherents and has become the 
dominant religion among the yellow peoples further east, 
in Burma, China, Thibet, Japan. The Moslem religion, 
having been thus accepted in virtue of the fact that its 
dominant tendency is in harmony with the strong innate 
tendency to unquestioning submission to a supreme will, 
then accentuates this tendency in all its converts, mould- 
ing their political relations to the same type, so that all 
recognise one earthly regent of God; and it has led to the 
almost complete suppression of any spark of the spirit of 
inquiry and scepticism that might otherwise display itself 
among these peoples. 

Another good illustration of the fact is afforded by the 
distribution of the two great divisions of the Christian 
religion in Western Europe. Among all the disputes and 
uncertainties of the ethnographers about the races of 
Europe, one fact stands out clearly — namely, that we can 
distinguish a race of northerly distribution and origin, 
characterised physically by fair colour of hair and skin 
and eyes, by tall stature and dolichocephaly (i. e. long 
shape of head), and mentally by great independence of 
character, individual initiative, and tenacity of will. 
Many names have been used to denote this type, but the 
usefulness of most of them has been spoilt through their 
application to denote linguistic groups (e. g. Indo-Ger- 
manic, Aryan), and by the false assumption that linguistic 
groups are racial groups. Hence recently the term Homo 
EuropcBus, first applied by Linnaeus to this type, has come 
into favour; and perhaps it is the best term to use, since 
this type seems to be exclusively European. It is also 
called the Nordic type. 



i6o National Mind sind Character 

The rest of the population of Europe, with the excep- 
tion of some peoples in the extreme north and east of partly 
mongoloid or yellow racial origin, seems to be chiefly de- 
rived from two stocks. Of these, the one type, which 
occupies chiefly the central regions, is most commonly 
denoted by the name Homo Alpinus; the other, chiefly 
in the south, by the name Homo Mediterrajieus. Both are 
of dark or brunette complexion and the principal physical 
difference between them is that the former, H. Alpinus, 
has a short, broad head (i.e. is brachycephalic) and also is of 
short stature; while the latter, H. Mediterraneus, is long- 
headed like the northern type and is perhaps taller than 
H. Alpinus. Mentally both these differ from the north- 
ern or European type in having less independence and 
initiative, a greater tendency to rely upon and seek guid- 
ance from authority. ' Now we find that the distribution 
of the Protestant variety of Christianity coincides very 
nearly with the regions in which the fair type predomi- 
nates; while in all other regions the Roman Catholic or 
Greek orthodox churches hold undisputed sway. North 
and South Germany illustrate the point. And Motley's 
account of the Netherlands shows how closely the line 
between Protestant Holland and Roman Catholic Belgium 
coincides with the line of racial division. We may note 
also that "Celts" of Ireland and Scotland early proved 
the superior strength of their religious tendencies by send- 
ing missionaries to England. 

It would be absurd to hold that this coincidence is for- 
ttiitous. It is clearly due to the assimilation of the form 
of the religious and ecclesiastical system to the innate 
tendencies of the people. The northern peoples have 
given the system a turn compatible with the independence 
of spirit which is their leading racial quaHty; and among 

* Cp. Ripley's Races of Europe and Prof. H. J. Fleure's Human Geography 
in Western Eur ope ^ London, 19 19. 



The Mind of a Nation i6l 

ourselves the tendency is apt to be pushed to an anarchical 
extreme in the rise of numerous small peculiar sects; this 
we must connect with the fact that the English represent 
in greatest purity the most independent branch of the 
Northern race. 

The peoples among whom the other racial elements 
predominate have developed and maintained a religion of 
authority. And it is clear how, this differentiation having 
been achieved, either form of religion favours and accen- 
tuates in the peoples among whom it has become estab- 
lished the innate tendencies that have shaped it. The 
religion of authority tends, both by its general teachings 
and by the deliberate efforts of its official representatives, 
to suppress the spirit of independent thought and inquiry 
and action; the Protestant religion, relatively at least, 
favours the development of the independent tendencies of 
individuals. This is not to say that any individual is a 
Mohammedan or a Protestant, because he belongs to this 
or that race; that would be a parody of my statement. 
The form of each man's religious belief is, in the vast 
majority of cases, determined for him by the fact of his 
growing up within a community in which that form of 
belief prevails. My thesis is that in the main the racial 
qualities of each community have played a great part in 
determining which form of belief it shall accept. If the 
reader will reflect how, at the time of the Reformation, 
various communities hung for a time in the balance, he 
will see that the innate differences we have noted may well 
have played the determining role. 

The same facts are illustrated by the political life of the 
European peoples. Only those among whom the northern 
race is predominant have developed individualistic forms 
of political and social organisation. Among the rest there 
appears clearly the tendency to rely upon the supreme 
authority of the state and to look to it for all initiative 



1 62 National Mind and Character 

and guidance, a tendency to centralised and paternal 
administration ; and this is the same, whether the external 
form of the political organisation be a monarchy or a 
republic. Thus France, in becoming a republic, did not 
overthrow the centraHsed system perfected by Henry 
IV, Louis XIV, Richelieu and Napoleon ; for that system 
was congenial to the innate qualities of the mass of the 
people. It is clear that the centralised and therefore 
rigid system of government tends to accentuate, among 
the people subjected to it, their tendency to rely on author- 
ity and to repress individual initiative; while the other 
form, such as obtains in this country and still more in the 
United States of America, tends to the development of the 
initiative and independence of individuals, giving them 
free scope and throwing them upon their own resources. 
Among any people, an institution or other cultural element 
that has had a history of this kind will, then, cause a great 
development in the mass of individuals of just those in- 
nate or racial tendencies of which it is itself the slowly 
acctmiulated result or product. 

If a nation is composed from stocks not too diverse, or 
if the original stocks have fused by intercrossing and have 
produced a fairly homogeneous people; and if this nation 
has enjoyed a long period of natural evolution undisturbed 
by violent influences from outside, conquests or invasions 
or immigrations on a great scale; then the social environ- 
ment will have been brought in the main into harmony 
with the innate qualities of the people, and it will mould 
the individuals of each generation very strongly, ac- 
centuating and confirming those innate tendencies. This 
for two reasons. First, the social environment will be 
strongly organised and homogeneous; that is to say, the 
various elements, the beliefs, customs, institutions, and 
arts that go to compose it, will be in harmony with one 
another and of strongly marked character; and they will be 



The Mind of a Nation 163 

almost universally accepted by that people as above critic- 
ism. Secondly, the institutions and customs have not to 
fight against the innate tendencies of the people in the 
formation of the adult minds, but co-operate harmoniously 
with them. 

Now, when authors dispute over the question of the 
influence of race in determining the nation, they usually 
fail to distinguish clearly between the direct effects and 
the indirect effects of racial qualities. 

Those who, like Mill, attribute to the social environ- 
ment unlimited power of moulding individuals and who 
regard the influence of race as insignificant, are misled by 
the contemplation of such nations as we have been con- 
sidering, the class of which our own is the most notable 
example, nations in which a strongly organised social 
environment makes in the direction of the innate ten- 
dencies. They overlook the fact that in any such nation 
the social environment, the body of institutions and 
traditions, is in the main the outcome and expression of 
these innate tendencies; they fail to see that the racial 
tendencies exert their strongest influence on national 
thought and action by means of the institutions, customs, 
and traditions on the growth of which they have exerted 
a constant directive pressure throughout many genera- 
tions. In order to realise fully the influence of race, we 
must consider peoples whose culture and much else that 
enters into their social environment has been impressed 
upon them from without. We then see how little the 
social environment can accomplish in the moulding of a 
people, when it is not congenial to and in harmony with 
the racial tendencies. 

The modern world contains certain instructive instances, 
of which Hayti is perhaps the most striking. There a 
circumscribed population of negro race has had a political 
and social and religious organisation and the elements of 



i64 National Mind and Character 

higher culture impressed upon it by Europeans, in the be- 
lief that it would be possible to construct a social environ- 
ment which would mould the people. France, at a time 
of revolutionary enthusiasm for liberty, equality, and 
fraternity, withdrew from the island and granted the 
people self-government. The consequence has been a 
rapid relapse into barbarism and savagery of the worst 
kinds. ^ 

It was the ignoring of the importance of race and the 
overestimation of the moulding influence of culture and 
institutions, eloquently voiced by Lord Macaulay, that 
led England eighty years ago to set out on the task of 
endowing the milHons of India with British culture and 
institutions. The task has been pursued in a half-hearted 
manner only; but already we see some of the incongruity 
of the results of these efforts; and the best observers assure 
us that, were the task accomplished and the reins of a 
representative government left in native hands, it would 
be but a few years before the whole country would be 
reduced to a chaotic anarchic condition no better than 
that in which we found it. Others go further and assert 
with some plausibiHty that Western culture is positively- 
injurious to the intellect and moral nature of Indians. "" 

In the Philippines the Americans seem to have appHed 
similar mistaken ideas in a reckless fashion in the first 
years of their administration; with the result that, ac- 
cording to some accounts, they were in a fair way to 
plunge those islands into poverty and debt and chronic 
rebelHon, while failing to secure affection, trust, or respect 
for themselves. 

We must conclude, then, that innate mental constitu- 
tion, and therefore race, is of fundamental importance in 

» Cf . The Black Republic, by Sir Spencer St. John and Where Black rules 
White, by H. Hesketh Prichard. 

* M. le Bon and more than one Indian civil servant in conversation. 



The Mind of a Nation 165 

determining national character, not so much directly as 
indirectly; for it gives a constant bias to the evolution of 
the social environment, and, through it, moulds the in- 
dividuals of each generation. It will help to make clear 
the influence of innate qualities, if, by an effort of imagina- 
tion, we suppose every English child to have been ex- 
changed at birth for an infant of some other nation (say 
the French) during some fifty years. At the end of that 
period the English nation would be composed of individ- 
uals of purely French origin or blood; it would have the 
innate qualities of the present French nation; and the 
French nation would be, in the same sense, English. 
What would be the effect? Presumably things would go 
on much as before for a time. There would be no sudden 
transformation of our language, our laws, our religious or 
political institutions; and those who make little of the 
influence of race might point to this result as a convincing 
demonstration of the truth of their view. But gradually, 
we must suppose, certain changes would appear; in the 
course of perhaps a century there would be an appreciable 
assimilation of English institutions to those of France at 
the present day, for example, the Roman Catholic reHg- 
ion would gain in strength at the cost of the Protestant. 

This view has been challenged and described as an 
extreme view.^ But it is not. Both extreme opposite 
views continue to be maintained just because the import- 
ance of the indirect cumulative effect of innate qualities 
on culture is ignored. The innate qualities are of great 
importance, but only in the course of centuries can they 
exert their full effect on culture. 

If then innate qualities have this importance, in what 
degree are they permanent? Here again two extreme 
views remain opposed to one another. Even as regards 
physical qualities this is still the case; and the problem is 

^ By G. Lowes Dickinson, Hihbert Journalf Jan., 191 1. 



i66 National Mind and Character 

much more difficult and at the same time infinitely more 
important as regards mental qualities. One reason for the 
belittling of innate qualities by Mill and Buckle, and for 
their overweening confidence in the power of institutions 
and environment, was the opinion generally prevailing in 
their time that, in so far as racial peculiarities exist, they 
can be modified and transformed in a few generations by 
physical and social environment. 

But, when, under the influence of Weissman's theories, 
the majority of biologists came to the conclusion that 
acquired qualities are not transmitted, the position of the 
"race theorisers" was immensely strengthened. For 
selection, natural or social or artificial, remained as the 
only recognised cause of change of racial qualities; and, 
since it is clear that the development of civilisation tends 
to bring to an end the operation of natural selection, owing 
to the more efficient shielding of the weaker by the stronger 
members of societies, and since no other form of selection 
seems to have operated forcibly to change race qualities, 
it was inferred that race qualities endure throughout long 
ages with very little change. 

Another revolution of opinion has had a similar effect. 
One of the old assumptions which seemed to justify the 
belief in rapid modifiability of race qualities was that the 
difference of culture between ourselves and our savage 
ancestors corresponds to, and is the expression of, an 
almost equally great difference of innate capacities, intel- 
lectual and moral. But this was in the main a misunder- 
standing. One well established fact suffices to show its 
improbability — namely, the larger size of the brains of 
Palaeolithic men as compared with our own. Our supe- 
riority of civilisation is due to slow accumulation, each 
generation adding comparatively little to the mass of 
intellectual and moral tradition which it inherits and 
passes on to later coming generations. In so far as differ- 



The Mind of a Nation 167 

ences of cultural level are associated with differences of 
level of innate intellectual and moral qualities, cultural 
superiority must be regarded as the effect, rather than the 
cause, of innate mental superiority. There are strong 
grounds for holding that, in so far as Europeans are in- 
nately superior to negroes, that superiority was achieved 
not by means of, and in the process of, the development of, 
civilisation; but rather before civilisation began; and that 
the principal mental differences of the various human 
stocks were, like their principal physical differences, pro- 
duced in the course of the immensely long ages of human 
life that preceded the dawn of civilisation, or at any rate 
of history, ages compared with which the historic period 
is but a very brief span. 

This view — namely, that there has been no great change, 
and certainly no great increase, of the mental powers of 
men during the historic period — was forcibly maintained 
by Dr. A. R. Wallace. ' Wallace pointed to the pyramids 
of Egypt and other great achievements of earlier civilisa- 
tions, such as writing, as evidence of the highly developed 
intellectual powers of men thousands of years before the 
Christian era. He concluded that the men of the early 
stone age were probably our equals, intellectually and 
morally, in respect to innate qualities. 

If, then, so little change of man's mental constitution 
has been produced in the course of many thousand years, 
even though the growth of civilisation has so profoundly 
modified his mode of life and the nature of his pursuits, 
that is good evidence of the great persistency of racial 
mental qualities. But we have more direct evidence of 
their persistence. As Wallace points out, the negro and 
the yellow races are scattered over many parts of the earth, 
and, though these regions present great diversities of 

» In the Fortnightly Review, Jan., 1910, and in his Social Environment 
and Moral Progress, London, 19 13. 



1 68 National Mind suid Character 

physical environment, men of either of the two races 
everywhere present the same mental peculiarities or strong 
similarities, for example, the Papuan and African and 
American negroes. And the characteristic differences 
between the two races are not diminished even where, as 
in the islands of the far East, they have been subjected to 
the same physical environment and modes of Hfe for long 
periods of time. In the eastern Archipelago, Papuans and 
Malayans occupying the same or adjoining islands are 
cited by Wallace as illustrating the persistence of racial 
mental differences; and I can bear out his remarks from 
my own observations in that region. 

But we must beware of excess in the direction of the 
unalterabiHty of race. The dogma of the non-trans- 
mi ssibility of acqmred qualities is by no means established; 
it seems not improbable that mental acquisitions are so 
transmitted in some degree, though with only very slight 
effect in each generation. Even now, when the difficulties 
of the principle of transmission of acquired qualities are 
generally understood, almost all those who deal with the 
problem of the genesis of mental and physical peculiarities 
of races find themselves driven to postulate the principle 
in order to explain the facts. And this in itself consti- 
tutes evidence of a certain value in support of the validity 
of the principle. 

Again, we must beware of assuming that there are no 
selective processes operating among us. Although natural 
selection may be almost inoperative, there may well be at 
work other forms of selection, social selections; and these 
are specially powerful amongst populations of blended 
stocks. 

Simiming up on the durability of racial peculiarities, we 
may say that racial qualities are extremely persistent; 
but that, nevertheless, they are subject to slow modifica- 
tions when the conditions of life are greatly changed, as by 



The Mind of a Nation 169 

emigration, or by changes of climate, or by social revolu- 
tions, and especially among populations of mixed origin. 

To return now to the question of mental homogeneity 
of a population as a condition of national character and 
collective mental life. Purity of race is the most obvious 
condition of such homogeneity; but few, if any, nations 
that have attained any high level of civilisation have been 
racially homogeneous ; probably for the simple reason that 
the civilisation of such a nation would crystallise at an 
early stage into rigid forms which would render further 
progress impossible. This has been the fate of most 
civilisations of the past; as Walter Bagehot put it, their 
cake of custom has so hardened as to become brittle, 
incapable of partial modification and growth, so that, like 
a crystal, it must either resist completely every modifying 
influence or be shattered irretrievably. ^ 

Certainly none of the European nations are racially 
homogeneous. Nevertheless, some of them approach 
homogeneity of innate qualities, or, rather, the degree of 
heterogeneity is much less in some than in others. Con- 
sider the case of England. Before the Anglo-Saxon inva- 
sion the population consisted in all probability of a mixture 
of the northern fair race with a darker race, probably 
that of H. Mediterraneus, in some proportion that we can- 
not determine, with small islands of H. Alpinus or of 
stocks formed by an earlier blending of this with the Nor- 
dic race. The Anglo-Saxon invasion brought great 
numbers of the pure representatives of the Northern race 
of closely allied stocks; and these did not confine them- 
selves to any one region, but, entering at many points of 
the south and east coasts, diffused themselves throughout 
almost all England, imposing themselves as masters upon 
those Britons whom they did not drive out. Ever since 
that time a crossing of the stocks has been going on freely, 

^ Physics and Politics. 



1 70 National Mind and Character 

little hindered by differences of area, language, law, or 
custom. And, with the exception of small numbers of 
the northern stock, Danes and Normans, the population 
has not received any considerable additions since the 
Saxon invasion. 

Now it has been shown by a simple calculation that, 
given three generations to the century, each one of us 
might claim ten million ancestors in the year looo A.D.; 
while in the fifth century, when this process of inter- 
marriage began, the number would be enormous, some 
thousands of millions; that is, if consangume marriages 
had never taken place. These figures make it clear that, 
in any mixed population in which intermarriage takes place 
freely, the two or more stocks must, after a comparatively 
brief period of time, become thoroughly blended, on one 
condition — namely, that the cross between the pure stocks 
is a stable stock, fertile inter se and with both the parent 
stocks. There seems to be no doubt that this was the 
case with the British and the Anglo-Saxon stocks, and 
that the English form now a stable new subrace, or second- 
ary race, in which the qualities of the northern race 
predominate. The subrace may be regarded as innately 
homogeneous in fairly high degree; not so homogeneous as 
a people of unmixed racial origin, or one formed by a 
blending of more remote date, but more so than most of the . ^ 
European nations. This is the sense in which we must j| 
understand the word race, in discussing the influence of 
race upon national character. i 

In most of the European countries the original mixture '| 
of races has been greater and the degree of blending less 
intimate. Thus France has the three stocks, H. Euro- 
pcBuSy Alpinus, Mediterraneus, all largely represented; 
but they have remained in some degree geographically 
separated in three belts running east and west.* Hence 

* Cp. Ripley, op. cit, and Fleure, op. cit. 



The Mind of a Nation 171 

there are greater innate mental differences between 
Frenchmen than between Englishmen. Nevertheless the 
strength of the Roman civilisation of Gaul sufficed to 
abolish differences of language and institutions and to 
assimilate the later coming Northmen, Franks, and Nor- 
mans; while the centralised system of administration, 
established in accordance with the innate tendencies of 
the major part of the population, has completed the work 
of a long series of national wars, and has produced a firmly 
united nation, bound by common traditions and moulded 
by common institutions. The greater centralisation of 
France seems to have compensated for the less degree of 
innate uniformity, so that the French people is hardly, if 
at all, less truly a nation than our own. 

In our own nation one racial cleft still remains. The 
Irish have never undergone that intimate mixture and 
blending with the Anglo-Saxon stock which has produced 
the English subrace; and so they remain an element which 
seriously disturbs the harmony of the national mind. And 
the same is perhaps true in a less degree of the Welsh 
people. On the other hand, the Scottish people, although 
they enjoyed their independent system of government for 
much longer periods than the Irish and Welsh and have a 
system of laws and customs differing in many respects from 
the English, and indeed may be said to have achieved a 
considerable degree of independent nationhood, have 
nevertheless become thoroughly incorporated in the 
British nation; for in the main mass of the Scotch the 
same northern race is the greatly predominant element. 

But it is not till we consider such a country as Austria- 
Hungary that we see the full importance of homogeneity 
of a people for the development of a national mind. There 
several races and subraces, one at least with a strong yellow 
strain, are grouped together under one flag; but they 
remain separated by language and by distribution and by 



172 National Mind and Character 

tradition, and, therefore, are but little mixed and still less 
blended. Under such conditions a national mind cannot 
be formed. The elements of different racial stock threaten 
to fall apart at any moment. ^ 

Going further afield, contrast India with China, two 
regions geographically comparable in area and in density 
of population and in other ways. The population of China 
is the most racially homogeneous of all large populations 
in the world. Hence an extreme uniformity of culture 
and social environment, which still further accentuates the 
tmiformity of mental type. Hence, in spite of the im- 
perfection of means of communication, we find great 
political stability and a considerable degree of national 
feeling, likely to be followed before long by harmonious 
national thought and action on the part of this vast nation. 
The one great distracting and disturbing factor in the life 
of China has been the intrusion of the Manchus, a people 
of somewhat different race and traditions. 

On the other hand, India is peopled by many different 
stocks, and, although these are geographically much 
mixed, they are but very little blended, owing to the 
prevalence from early times of the caste system. The 
light coloured intellectual Brahman lives side by side with 
small black folk, as different physically and mentally as 
the Englishman and the Hottentot; and there are also 
large numbers of other widely differing racial stocks, in- 
cluding some of yellow race. Hence an extreme diversity 
of social environment, save in the case of the Moslem 
converts, who, however, being scattered among, the rest, 
do but increase the endless variety of custom, creed, and 
social environment. Hence the people of India have never I 
been bound together in the slightest degree, save purely 
externally by the power of foreign conquerors, the Moguls 

* This was written in 19 lo, and now in 19 19 the dissolution which was so 
obviously impending is an accomplished fact. 



The Mind of a Nation 173 

and the British; and hence, even though nations have 
begun at various times to take form in various areas, as 
e. g. the Sikh nation, they have never achieved any high 
degree of permanence and stability and are restricted in 
area and numbers. 

Now, let us consider for a moment an apparent excep- 
tion from the conclusion to which the foregoing argument 
seems to point — namely, that homogeneity of innate 
qualities is the prime condition of a developed and har- 
monious national life. 

The most striking exception is afforded by the people of 
the United States of America, or the American nation. 
There we see a great area populated by immigrants from 
every part and race of Europe in times so recent that, 
although they are pretty well mixed, they are but little 
blended by crossing; a considerable part of the population 
still consisting of actual immigrants and their children. 
Here, then, there can be no question of any homogeneity 
as regards innate mental qualities. Nevertheless, the 
people is truly a nation and, perhaps, further advanced in 
the evolution of national consciousness, thought, and 
action than many other of the civilised peoples. This we 
must attribute to homogeneity of mental qualities which 
is in the main not innate but acquired, a uniformity of 
acquired qualities, especially of all those that are most 
important for national life. 

Following Miinsterberg's recent account of The Psy- 
chology of the American People we may recognise as in- 
dividual characteristics, almost universally diffused, a 
spirit of self- direction and self-confidence, of independence 
and initiative of a degree unknown elsewhere, a marvellous 
optimism or hopefulness both in private and public affairs, 
a great seriousness tinged with religion, a humorousn^s, 
an interest in the welfare of society, a high degree of self- 
respect, and a pride and confidence in the present and still 



174 National Mind and Character 

more in the future of the nation; an intense activity and 
a great desire for self -improvement ; a truly democratic 
spirit which regards all men (or rather all white men) as 
essentially or potentially equal, and a complete intolerance 
of caste. 

Such high degree of acquired homogeneity of individual 
qualities seems to be due in about equal parts to uni- 
formity of social and of physical environment, both of 
which make strongly in the same direction. The physical 
environment consists in a great and rich territory, still 
only partially developed, a fairly uniform climate, and a 
uniformity of the physical products of human labour 
resulting from the immense development of the means of 
communication. The importance of the physical uni- 
formity we may realise on reflecting that the one great 
divergence of physical conditions, the sub-tropical climate 
of the southern States, gave rise to the one great and 
dangerous division of the people which for a time threat- 
ened the harmonious development of the national life; 
that is to say, the civil war was due to the divergence of 
the social system and economic interests of the southern 
States resulting from their sub-tropical climate. 

The uniformity of social environment we must ascribe, 
firstly and chiefly, to the fortunate circumstance that the 
first immigrants were men of one well marked and highly 
superior type, men who possessed in the fullest measure 
the independence of character and the initiative of the fair 
northern race, and who firmly established the superior 
social environment of individualistic type that had been 
gradually evolved in England. Secondly, to the fact that 
the peopling of the whole country has taken place by 
diflFusion from this strongly organised initial society; its 
institutions and ideas, especially its language, its political 
freedom, its social seriousness, being carried everywhere. 
Thirdly, to the fact that the country was just such as to 



The Mind of a Nation 175 

give the greatest scope to, and so to develop, these innate 
tendencies of the earliest settlers and their successors. 
Fourthly, to the fact that the great diffusion of the popu- 
lation of mixed origin has only taken place since the means 
of communication have become very highly developed. 
Consider, as one example of the effects of the ease of 
communication between all parts, the influence of the 
American Sunday newspapers. These papers are read on 
an enormous scale all over the continent; and the bulk of 
the contents of those published in different places is identi- 
cal, being prepared and printed in New York, or other 
great city, and then sent out to be blended with a little 
local matter in each centre of publication; thus every 
Sunday morning vast numbers are reading the same stuff. 
Lastly, it must be added, it is largely due to the fact that 
in the main the population has been recruited by those 
elements of different European peoples who shared in some 
degree the leading tendencies of the American character, 
independence, initiative, energy, and hopefulness; for it 
is only such people who will tear themselves from their 
places in an old civilisation and face the unknown possi- 
bilities of a distant continent. In spite of an increasing 
proportion of emigrants of a rather unlike type from south- 
eastern Europe, there seems good ground for hope that 
these factors will continue to secure a sufficient uniformity 
of acquired qualities, until the diverse elements shall have 
been fused by intermarriage to a new and stable subrace, 
innately homogeneous. 

The Americans are, then, no exception to the rule that 
the evolution of a national mind presupposes a certain 
considerable degree of homogeneity of mental qualities 
among the individuals of which the nation is composed. 
They merely show that, under peculiarly favourable 
physical and social conditions, a sufficient degree of such 
homogeneity may perhaps be secured in spite of consider- 



176 National Mind and Character 

able racial heterogeneity. But the favourable issue of 
the vast experiment is not yet completely assured. 

There remains in the American people one great section 
of the population, namely the negroes and the men of 
partly negro descent, whose innate qualities, mental and 
physical, are so different from those of the rest of the 
population, that it seems to be incapable of absorption 
into the nation. This section remains within the nation as 
a foreign body which it can neither absorb nor extrude and 
which is a perpetual disturber and menace to the national 
life. The only hope of solving this difficult problem seems 
to lie in the possibility of territorial segregation of the 
coloured population in an area in which it might, with 
assistance from the American people, form an independent 
nation. At present it illustrates in the most forcible 
manner the thesis of this chapter. 

The geographical peculiarities of the country inhabited 
by a nation may greatly favour, or may make against, 
homogeneity, in so far as this depends on acquired interests 
and sentiments. 

The division of the territory occupied by a nation by anyi 
physical barrier makes against homogeneity and therefore] 
against national unity; whereas absence of internal bar- 
riers and the presence of well-marked natural boundaries 
afford conditions the most favourable to homogeneity. 

Almost all the great and stable nations have occupied 
well-defined natural territories. In Great Britain and 
Japan the national spirit is perhaps more developed thani 
elsewhere. How much does Great Britain or Japan owe! 
this to the insular character of its territory, which from! 
early days has sharply marked off the people from all* 
others, making of them a well-defined and closed group,! 
within which free intermarriage has given homogeneity ' 
of innate qualities, and within which a national culttire has 
grown up undisturbed; so that by mental and physical 



The Mind of a Nation 177 

type, and by language, religion, tradition, and sentiment, 
the people are sharply marked off from all others, and 
assimilated to one another! 

A unitary well-defined territory of well-marked and 
fairly uniform character tends to national unity, not only 
through making the community a relatively closed one, 
but also by aiding the imagination to grasp the idea of the 
nation and offering a common object to the affections and 
sentiments of the people. 

Contrast in this respect the physical characters of 
England and Germany. The boundaries of the latter are 
almost everywhere artificial and arbitrary and have fluc- 
tuated greatly. It would be impossible for a poet to write 
of Germany as Shakespeare wrote of England: 

This fortress built by Nature for herself 
Against infection and the hand of war; 
This happy breed of men, this little world, 
This precious stone set in the silver sea, 

and all the rest of that splendid passage. France, Spain, 
Italy, Greece, Denmark, Scandinavia, are all more for- 
tunate than Germany or Austria in this respect; and the 
lack of such natural boundaries has been in the past, and 
threatens to be in the future, a source of weakness to the 
German nation. We may, I think, not improbably attrib- 
ute, in part at least, to this circumstance a peculiarity 
often noticed in German emigrants — namely, that they 
rapidly become denationalised and assimilated by the 
peoples among whom they settle, and that an American- 
ised German, for example, has often less sympathetic 
feeling for Germany than a foreigner. For, owing largely 
to the lack of natural boundaries and the consequent 
fluctuations that have occurred, and the mingling and 
blending with other peoples, Germany is a less clear-cut 
conception than Great Britain or France; to be a German 
12 



178 National Mind and Character 

is something much less definite than to be an Englishman 
or a Japanese, or even a Frenchman or a Spaniard. ' And 
the presence or lack of definite natural territorial boimda- 
ries operates in a similar way through many centuries, 
determining on the one hand historical continuity to a 
people as a whole, or on the other hand breaches of his- 
torical continuity. 

The United States of America afford a fine example of 
the binding influence of a well-defined territory; for here 
the effect is clearly isolated from racial factors and from 
slowly accumulated tradition. The Monroe doctrine is 
the outward official expression of this effect. The private 
individual effect is a sense of part ownership of a splendid 
territory with a great future before it. And we are told, 
I believe truly, that this sense is very strong and very 
generally diffused even among immigrants ; that it inspires 
an unselfish enthusiasm for the work of developing the 
immense resources of the country; that this is the idealistic 
motive of much of the intense activity which we are apt to 
ascribe to the love of the ''almighty dollar " ; and that it is 
one of the main causes of the rapid assimilation of immi- 
grants to the national type of mind. 

The Chinese nation, again, owes its existence and its 
homogeneity of mental and physical type to geographical 
unity. Roughly, China consists of the basins of two im- 
mense rivers, not separated from one another by any great 
physical barrier, but forming a compact territory well 
marked off save in the north. It comprises no such 
partially separate areas as in Europe are constituted by 1 
Spain, or Italy, or Greece, or Scandinavia, or even France; 

» The great myth of the racial unity and superiority of the German people 
which we have noticed above, has been cultivated and propagated, with 
elaborate disregard for fact by the German State and its henchmen in the 
universities and elsewhere, in a deliberate effort to remedy by art the lack of 
natural boundaries and of true national homogeneity. 



The Mind of a Nation 179 

almost all parts are well adapted for agriculture. Hence, 
largely, the national unity and the " national sentiment 
which have long existed, and possibly a latent capacity for 
national thought and action. 

Perhaps the most striking instance of all is ancient 
Egypt. There, in the long strip of land rendered fertile 
by the waters of the Nile, a people of mixed origin was long 
shut up and isolated; there all men felt their immediate 
dependence on the same great powers, the great river 
which once a year overflows its banks, and the scorch- 
ing sun which passes every day across a cloudless sky. 
There all men looked out on the same unvarying and un- 
varied landscape, hoped and feared for the same causes, 
suffered the same pains, prayed for the same goods. 
There was formed one of the most stable and enduring 
of nations, whose uniform culture certainly bears the im- 
press of the uniform monotonous physical environment. ' 

The other way in which physical environment affects 
homogeneity is by determining similarity or difference of 
occupations and, through them, similarities or differences 
of practical interests and of acquired qualities. So long as 
such differences are determined in many small areas, the 
result is merely a greater differentiation of the parts, 
without danger to the unity of the whole nation. But, 
when the physical differences divide a whole people into 
two or more locally separate groups differing in occupation 
and interests and habits, they endanger the unity of the 
whole. There are to-day many countries in which the 
distribution of mineral wealth is exerting an influence of 
this sort, giving rise to the differentiation of an industrial 
area from agricultural areas and a consequent divergence 
of interests and of mental habits; notably South Africa, 
Spain, and Italy. 

* In his Works of Man Mr. March Philips shows clearly the influence of 
the Egyptian landscape upon the arts of sculpture and architecture. 



i8o National Mind sind Character 

Great Britain is fortunate in this respect also. Its 
geological formation presents on a small scale all the 
principal strata from the oldest to the most recent, a fact 
which seciires great diversity within a compact area, an 
area too compact to allow of divergences of population 
being produced by differences of geological formation; 
so that it enjoys the advantages of diversity without its 
drawbacks. Although a certain degree of differentiation 
between north and south may be noted, it is not sharp or 
great enough to be dangerous. But let us imagine that 
coal and iron had been confined to Scotland. Would 
there be now the same harmony between the two countries 
as actually obtains? The United States of America 
affords a good illustration of this principle, as I have al- 
ready pointed out ; the subtropical cHmate of the southern 
States gave rise to a differentiation of occupation, and 
consequently of ideas and interests and sentiments, which 
was almost fatal to the unity of the nation. A similar 
differentiation between the agricultural west and the 
industrial and commercial east seems to be the greatest 
danger to the future unity of the nation ; and the same may 
be said of the Canadian people. 

Ireland illustrates well the effects of both kinds of 
physical influence. The Irish Channel has perpetuated 
that difference of race and consequent difference of religion 
which, but for it, would probably have been wiped out by 
free intermarriage; while the lack of coal and iron in the 
greater part of the country has prevented the spread of 
industrialism, and has thus accentuated the difference 
between the Irish people and the English. And it is 
obvious that among the Protestants of Ulster the accessi- 
bihty of coal and iron, maintaining a divergence of occu- 
pations and of interests which prevents racial and cultural 
blending, perpetuates the racial and traditional differences 
between them and the rest of the population. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Freedom of Communication as a Condition of 
National Life 

LET us consider now very briefly in relation to the life 
of a nation a second essential condition of all collec- 
tive mental life — namely, that the individuals shall 
be in free communication with one another. This is 
obviously necessary to the formation of national mind and 
character. It is only through an immensG development 
of the means of communication, especially the printing 
press, the railway and the telegraph, that the modern 
Nation-State has become possible, and has become the 
dominant type of political organisms. So familar are 
we with this type, that we are apt to identify the Na- 
tion and the State and to regard the large Nation-State 
as the normal type of State and of Nation, forgetting 
that its evolution was not possible before the modern 
period. 

In the ancient world the City-State was the dominant 
type of political organism; and to Plato and Aristotle 
any other type seemed undesirable, if not impossible. For 
they recognised that collective deliberation and volition 
are essential to the true State. Aristotle, trying to imag- 
ine a vast city, remarks — ''But a city, having such vast 
circuit, would contain a nation rather than a state, like 
Babylon." The translator there uses the word ''nation," 
not in the modern sense, but rather as we use "people" 
to denote a population of common stock not organised 

i8i 



i82 National Mind and Character 

to form a nation. The limits of the political organism 
capable of a collective mental life were rightly held to be 
set by the number of citizens who could live so close 
together as to meet in one place to discuss all public affairs 
by word of mouth. 

The great empires of antiquity were not nations; they 
had no collective mental life. Although the Roman Em- 
pire, in the course of its long and marvellous history, did 
succeed in generating in almost all its subject peoples a 
certain sentiment of pride in and attachment to the Em- 
pire, it cannot be said to have welded them into one nation; 
for, in spite of the splendid system of roads and of posting, 
communication between the parts was too difficult and 
slow to permit the reciprocal influences essential to collec- 
tive life. As in all the ancient empires, the parts were 
held together only by a centralised, despotic, executive 
organisation; there was no possibility of collective delibera- 
tion and volition. ^ 

All through history there has obviously been some cor- 
relation between the size of political organisms and the 
degree of development of means of communication. At 
the present time those means have become so highly 
developed that the widest spaces of land and sea no longer 
present any insuperable Hmits to the size of nations; and 
the natural tendency for the growth of the larger states at 
the expense of the smaller, by the absorption of the latter, 
seems to be increasingly strong. It seems not unlikely 
that almost the whole population of the world will shortly 
be included in five immense States — the Russian or Slav, 
the Central European, the British, the American, and the 
Yellow or East Asiatic State. The freedom of com- 
munication between the countries of Europe is now 
certainly sufficient to allow of their forming a single nation, 

«Cf. Sir S. Dill's The Roman Empire from Nero to Augustus, London, 
1905. 



Freedom of Communication 183 

if other conditions, such as diversities of racial tjrpe and 
of historical sentiments, would permit it. 

Although, then, the platform and the orator and the 
assembly remain important influences in modern times, it 
is primarily the telegraph, wireless telegraphy, the printing 
press, and the steam engine, that have rendered possible 
the large modern nations; for these have facilitated the 
dissemination of news and the expression of feeling and 
opinion on a large scale, and the free circulation of persons. ' 

Without this freedom of communication the various 
parts of the nation cannot become adequately conscious 
of one another; and the idea of the whole must remain very 
rudimentary in the minds of individuals; each part of the 
whole remains ignorant of many other parts, and there 
can be no vivid consciousness of a common welfare and a 
common purpose. But, more important still, there can 
be none of that massive influence of the whole upon each 
of the units which is of the essence of collective mental 
life. Of these means of reciprocal influence the press is 
the most important; though, of course, its great influence 
is only rendered possible by the railway and the telegraph. 

Hence we find that it is as regards the press that Great 
Britain and America differ most markedly from such states 
as Germany, and still more Russia. To an Englishman 
or American the meagre news-sheets which in Germany 
take the place of our daily and weekly press bring a shock 
of astonishment when he first discovers them; and that 
astonishment is not diminished when he finds that the 
best people hardly trouble to look at them occasionally. ^ 

* Since these lines were written a new mode of rapid locomotion, namely 
the aerial, which has resulted from the invention and rapid development of 
the internal combustion engine, threatens to eclipse all others in its effects 
upon the organisation of the world. 

^ This state of affairs has no doubt been considerably altered during the 
great war; the political education of Germany, a painful but salutary pro- 
cess, is progressing rapidly. 



1 84 National Mind and Character 

It is interesting to note how the general election of 
January, 1910, illustrated the importance of improved 
means of communication. It was found that the number 
of citizens voting at the polls was a far larger proportion of 
those on the register than at any previous election; and, in 
this respect, the election was a more complete expression of 
the will of the people than any preceding one. This seems 
to have been due to the use of the motor-car, at that time 
the latest great addition to our means of communication. 

The modern improvements of means of communication 
tend strongly to diminish the importance of the geographi- 
cal factors we considered in the foregoing chapter; for they 
practically abolish what in earlier ages were physical 
barriers to intercourse ; they render capital and labour more 
mobile; and they make many forms of industry less -de- 
pendent upon local physical conditions and, therefore, less 
strictly confined by geographical factors. As instances 
of important developments of this order in the recent past 
or near future, the reader may be reminded of the railway 
over the Andes between Chile and Argentina, the tunnels 
through the Alps, the Channel tunnel, the Siberian rail- 
way, the Suez and Panama canals, the Cape to Cairo 
railway, and, above all, aerial transport. All these make 
for free intercourse between peoples. 

Easy means of communication promote development in 
the direction of the organic unity of a nation in another 
way — namely, they promote specialisation of the func- 
tions of different regions; they thus render local groups 
incapable of hving as relatively independent closed com- 
munities ; for they make each local group more dependent 
upon others, each upon all and the whole upon each ; hence 
they develop the common interest of each part in the good 
of' the whole. 

This influence already extends beyond national groups 
and it had been hoped that its further growth was about to 



Freedom of Conmnunication 185 

render war between nations impossible. ' To-day England 
is contemplating a task never before attempted, the fusing 
into one nation of the peoples of the mother-country and 
her distant colonies. Whether or no she will succeed 
depends upon whether the enormously increased facilities 
of communication can overcome the principal effects of 
physical barriers that we have noted — namely, lack of 
intermarriage and divergence of occupations, with the 
consequent divergence of mental type and interests. The 
task is infinitely more difficult than the establishment of 
such an Empire as the Roman; not because the distances 
are greater, but because the union must take the form of 
nationhood, because it must take the form of a collective 
mind and not that of a merely executive organisation. 
But, in the considerations which have shown us that 
membership in and devotion to a smaller group is by no 
means adverse to membership in and devotion to a larger 
group, we have ground for believing that the task is not 
impossible of achievement. 

The slow rate of progress towards nationhood of such 
peoples as the Russian and the Chinese has been largely 
due to lack of means of free communication between the 
parts of these countries. On the introduction of improved 
communications, we may expect to see rapid progress of 
this kind; for many of the other essential conditions are 
already present in both countries. 

The fact that in the Nation-State the communications 
between individuals and between the parts of the whole 
are in the main indirect, mediated by the press, the tele- 
graph, and the printed word in general, rather than by 
voice and gesture and the other direct bodily expressions 
of thought and emotion, modifies the primary manifesta- 
tions of group life in important ways which we must notice 
in a later chapter. 

» Cf. N. Angell, The Great Illusion. 



CHAPTER IX 
The Part of Leaders in National Life 

WE turn now to a third very important condition of 
the growth of the national mind, one which also 
has its analogue in both the crowd and the army. 
A crowd always tends to follow some leader in thought, 
feeling, and action; and its actions are effective in propor- 
tion as it does so. To follow and obey a leader is the 
simplest, most rudimentary fashion in which the crowd's 
action may become more effective, consistent, intelligent, 
. controlled. Not any one can be such a leader ; exceptional 
quahties are necessary. In every army the importance, of 
leadership is fully recognised. A hierarchy of leaders is 
the essence of its organisation. In the deliberately organ- 
ised army, the appointment of leaders is the principal and 
almost the sole direct means taken by the State to organ- j| 
ise the army. Ever3^hing is done to give to the leaders of '" ' 
each grade the greatest possible prestige, especially by 
multiplying and accentuating the distinctions between the 
grades. Though much can be accomplished in this way, 
unless the men chosen as leaders have in some degree the 
superior qualities required by their position in the hier- 
archy, the whole organisation will be of little value. 

The same is true in much higher degree of nations. If 
a people is to become a nation, it must be capable of 
producing personalities of exceptional powers, who will 
play the part of leaders; and the special endowments of 
the national leader require to be more pronounced and 

186 



The Part of Leaders in National Life 187 

exceptional, of a higher order, than those required for the 
exercise of leadership over a fortuitous crowd. 

Such personalities, more effectively perhaps than any 
other factors, engender national unity and bring it to a 
high pitch. There are regions in which the other main 
conditions of national unity have long obtained, but which 
have failed to become the seat of any enduring nation. 
Although the greater part of Africa, perhaps the richest 
continent of the globe, has been in the possession of the 
negro races during all the ages in which the European, 
Asiatic, and American civilisations were being developed, 
those races have never founded a nation. Nevertheless 
many, perhaps most, negroes are capable of acquiring 
European culture and of turning it to good account. And, 
when brought under the influence of Arabs or men of other 
races, they have formed rudimentary nations.' The 
incapacity to form a nation must be connected with the 
fact that the race has never produced any individuals of 
really high mental and moral endowments, even when 
brought under foreign influences; and it would seem that 
it is incapable of producing such individuals; the few dis- 
tinguished negroes, so called, of America — such as Douglass, 
Booker Washington, Du Bois — have been, I believe, in all 
cases mulattoes or had some proportion of white blood. 
We may fairly ascribe the incapacity of the negro race to 
form a nation to the lack of men endowed with the qualities 
of great leaders, even more than to the lower level of 
average capacity. On the other hand, there is at least 
one people which, in the absence of every other condition, 
has continued to retain something of the character of a 
nation for many generations — namely, the Jews. The 
Jews are not even racially homogeneous, and they are 
scattered through all the world under the most varied 

'Incipient nations have appeared where the Bantu stock has produced 
occasionally great warrior chiefs such as Chaka and Cetewayo. 



1 88 National Mind and Character 

physical conditions; yet the influence of a succession of 
men of exceptional power, Moses and his successors the 
prophets, all devoted to the same end; — namely, the 
establishment of the Jewish nation and rehgion — ^has 
lived on through many generations and still holds this 
people together, marking it off from all others. 

This is an extreme instance. But another almost 
equally striking case is that of the Arab nation, which has 
owed its existence to one man. The Arab nation was 
made by the genius of Mahomet, who welded together, 
by the force of his personality and the originality and 
intensity of his religious conviction, the warring idola- 
trous clans of Arabia. Until his advent these had been a 
scattered multitude, in spite of racial and geographical 
uniformity, geographical isolation, and fairly free inter- 
communication. We have here one of the purest, clearest 
instances of the effect of great personalities in furthering 
nationhood ; for there seems to be no reason to beHeve that, 
if Mahomet had not lived, any such development of the 
Arabian people would have taken place. 

M. le Bon has produced a curious piece of evidence bear- 
ing on this question. He has measured the cranial 
capacity of a great ntimber of skulls of different races, and 
has shown that any large collection of skulls from one of 
the peoples who have formed a progressive nation invari- 
ably contains a certain small number of skulls of markedly 
superior capacity, implying exceptionally large brains; 
while any similar collection of skulls from one of the un- 
progressive peoples, like the negro differs, not so much in 
the smaller average size of the brain, as in the greater 
uniformity of size, that is to say, the absence of individuals 
of exceptionally large brains.' He, rightly, I think, sees 
in the absence of such individuals a main condition of the 
unprogressive character of these races; and, in the ex- 

^ Psychological Laws of the Evolution oj Peoples. 



The Part of Leaders in National Life 189 

ceptionally large brains produced among the other peoples 
a main condition of their progress. 

These indications are borne out by a review of the his- 
tory of any nation that has achieved a considerable 
development. Every such people has its national heroes 
whom it rightly glorifies or worships ; for to them it owes in 
chief part its existence. 

To them also it owes in large measure the forms of its 
institutions, its religion, its dominant ideas and ideals, its 
morals, its art and literature, all that of which it is most 
proud, all its victories of peace as well as of war, the mem- 
ory of which and the common pride in which is the strong- 
est of all national bonds. ^ 

Who can estimate the enormous influence of Confucius 
and Lao-Tse in moulding and rendering uniform the cul- 
ture of China ? The influence of single individuals has un- 
doubtedly been greater in the early than in the later stages 
of civilisa-tion ; for there was then a more open field, a 
virgin soil, as it were, for the reception of their influence. 
In the developed nation the mass of accumulated know- 
ledge and tradition is so much greater, that the modifica- 
tions and additions made by any one man necessarily are 
relatively small. 

The leading modern nations owe their position to their 
having produced great men in considerable numbers; for 
that reason also no one man stands out so prominently as 
Mahomet or Confucius or Moses. Nevertheless their 
existence can in many cases be traced to some few great 
men. Would Germany now be a nation, but for Freder- 
ick the Great and Bismarck? Would America, but for 



^ I do not propose to examine in this book the much discussed question — 
Are the leaders of a nation to be regarded as produced by the nation accord- 
ing to the general laws of biology and psychology, or as given to them by 
some supernatural process? This question belongs to a branch of Social 
Psychology which is not included in the volume. 



190 National Mind and Character 

Washington, Hamilton, and Lincoln? Would Italy, but 
for Garibaldi and Mazzini and Cavour? How greatly is 
the unity of national spirit and tradition among English- 
men due to the great writers who have produced the na- 
tional literatiu*e, and to the great statesmen and soldiers 
and sailors who have given her a proud position in the 
world! What would England be now if Shakespeare, 
Newton and Darwin, Cromwell and Chatham, Marl- 
borough and Nelson and Wellington had never been born? 

And it is not only the men of great genius who are essen- 
tial to the modern nation, but also men of more than aver- 
age powers, though not of the very highest. 

Let us try to imagine the fifty leading minds in each 
great department of activity suddenly removed from 
among us. That will help us to realise the extent to which 
the mental life of the nation is dependent on them. Clear- 
ly, we should be reduced to intellectual, moral, and 
aesthetic chaos and nullity in a very short time. If a 
similar state of affairs should continue for some few genera- 
tions, Britain would very soon cease to be of any im- 
portance in the world. The force of national traditions 
might keep up a certain unity; but we should be a people, 
or a crowd, living in the past, without energy, without 
pride in the present or hope in the futtire, having perhaps 
a Httle melancholy national sentiment, but incapable of 
national thought or action. 

The continuance of the power and prosperity and unity 
of national life, the continued existence of the national 
mind and character, depends, then, upon the continued 
production of numbers of such men of more than average 
capacity. It is these men who keep alive from generation 
to generation, and spread among the masses and so render 
effective, the ideas and the moral influence of the men of 
supremely great powers. These men exert a guidance and 
a selection over the cultural elements which the mass of 



The Part of Leaders in National Life 191 

men absorb. They praise what they believe to be good, 
and decry what they believe to be bad; and, in virtue of 
the prestige which their exceptional powers have brought 
them, their verdict is accepted and moulds popular opin- 
ion and sentiment. 

Consider how great in this way has been the influence 
of men like Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, and Ruskin. The 
tone and standard of taste, thought, and sentiment are 
set and maintained by such men. It is in their minds 
chiefly that the system of ideals and sentiments, which are 
the guiding principles and moving forces of the national 
mind, is perpetuated. They are truly "the salt of the 
earth"; without them the nation would soon fall into frag- 
ments, or become an inert and powerless mass of but low 
degree of organisation and unity. 

It is because the national ideals and sentiments are 
formed by these leading spirits, and are perpetuated and 
developed by them, and by them impressed in some degree 
upon the mass of the people, and because in all national 
movements their influence predominates, that the judg- 
ments and actions, the character and the sentiments, of 
a nation may be different from, and in the higher nations 
are superior to, those of the average men of the nation. 
As Fouillee said — "The national character is not always 
best expressed by the mass, by the vulgar, nor even by the 
actual majority. There exists a natural elite which, better 
than all the rest, represents the soul of the entire people, 
its radical ideas, and its most essential tendencies. This 
is what the politicians too often forget."' That is to say, 
it is what they forget when, as is too often the case in this 
country, they consider that no movement must be under- 
taken till the mass of the people demands it. They ignore 
the fact that leadership is essential to the maintenance 
of national life at a high level, and, instead of exercising 

* Psychologic du peuplefrangais, p. 13. 



192 National Mind and Character 






initiative, they wait for it to come from below — wait for 
a mandate, as they say. The late President Roosevelt 
was a fine example of the contrary type of statesmanship. 
The character of the talents displayed by these exception- 
ally gifted individuals determines largely the form of the 
civilisation and, through shaping the social environment, 
tends to bring the minds of the mass of individuals more or 
less into harmony with it, giving them something of the 
same tendencies. 

The men of genius of certain peoples, more especially 
peoples of relative racial purity, have excelled in some one 
direction. Thus the Semites have produced great reli- 
gious teachers and little else, and have given to the world 
its three great monotheistic religions. The Tartar race has 
produced from time to time great soldiers and little else. 
It has made immense conquests and established dynasties 
ruling over other peoples. But, as in the case of the Turks 
who owe their national existence to a line of great despots 
of the house of Othman, the> make little progress in 
civilisation and they do not unify the peoples they rule; 
for they produce ability of no other kind. 
. We see in most of the leading European nations the 
predominance of certain forms of genius. Modern Italy 
boasts chiefly men great in religion and art, perhaps owing 
to the predominance of Homo Mediterraneus; Spain in 
pictorial art and military conquest ; England in poetry and 
administration and science; Germany in music and philo- 
sophy. Nevertheless, each of these peoples has produced 
men of the greatest power in all or several kinds; and this 
we may connect with the fact that they are all of very 
mixed racial composition. And we may add that France, 
the most composite or mixed racially, has produced the 
greatest variety of genius. 

The production of the largest numbers of eminent men 
by peoples of mixed and blended racial elements, not too 



i 



The Part of Leaders in National Life 193 

widely different, is what biological knowledge would lead 
us to expect. For, if a subrace is produced by crossing of 
varieties, it will be one of much greater variability than a 
pure race; as we see in the cases of the domesticated horse 
and dog and pigeon, of which the modern varieties are only 
kept pure by continual rejection of the departures from 
the standards, and of which the great variability renders 
possible the production, by selection of very marked new 
features in a brief period of time. 

The many elements which go to form the mental con- 
stitution of an individual become, in a mixed race, va- 
riously combined. If the crossed races are very widely 
different, the results seem to be in nearly all cases bad. 
The character of the cross-bred is made up of divergent 
inharmonious tendencies, which give rise to internal con- 
flict, just as the physical features appear in bizarre com- 
bination; what examples we have — the Spanish Americans, 
the Eurasians, the Mulattoes, the half-breeds of Java and 
Canada — seem to show that a people so composed will 
produce few great men and will not become a great nation. 

But, when the crossed races are less widely divergent, 
the elements of which the mental constitution is composed 
(and which direct observation and analogy with physical 
heredity show to be transmitted more or less independ- 
ently of one another from parent to offspring) have 
opportunities to come together in new combinations, which 
result in mental constitutions unlike those of either parent 
(that is to say, the cross-breds are variable) ; and among 
these new combinations, while some will form minds below 
the average, others will form minds above the average in 
various degrees; and these, so long as the constitution is 
not too much weakened by radical lack of harmony of its 
elements, will be the effective great men. 

Incidentally, these considerations perhaps throw light 
on a fact much discussed — namely, that exceptional 
13 



194 National Mind and Character 

powers, especially when of highly specialised nature, are 
often exhibited by persons of unstable mental constitution; 
whence arises the popular belief that genius is alHed to, 
or is a form of, insanity. 

These considerations also raise a presumption that 
peoples derived by the blending of several stocks may be 
expected to have progressed further in civilisation and in 
national growth than those of purer stock; and that, while 
the racial purity of a people may give stability, such a 
people will be liable to arrest and crystallisation of civilisa- 
tion at an early stage, before culture is sufficiently ad- 
vanced to render possible a highly developed national life. 
These indications are well borne out by a surve}^ of the 
peoples of the world. We may see here, in all probability, 
one_ of the main causes of the early crystallisation of 
Chinese civilisation. Homogeneity and racial purity 
have produced extreme stabiHty, but at the cost of the 
variability which produces great and original minds and, 
therefore, at the cost of capacity for national progress 
beyond an early stage. 



I 



CHAPTER X 
Other Conditions of National Life 

IN the two foregoing chapters, we have considered in 
relation to the life of nations three principal conditions 
essential to all collective mental life and action, even 
that of the unorganised crowd — namely, homogeneity, 
free communications, and leadership. We have now to 
consider other conditions which may render the collective 
mental processes of nations very different from, and super- 
ior to, those of a mere crowd. 

In considering a patriot army as exemplifying collective 
life of a relatively high level, we distinguished five principal 
conditions that raise it above the level of the mental life 
of the crowd, in addition to one which is present in some 
crowds. This last was a common well-defined purpose 
present to, and dominant in, the minds of all individuals. 
It is this condition mainly that renders the collective 
mental life of such an army so simple, so relatively easy 
to understand, and so extremely effective. 

This condition — a clearly defined common purpose 
dominant in the minds of the great mass of the constituent 
units — is for the most part lacking in the life of nations; 
its absence is one of the principal reasons for the ineffec- 
tiveness and bewildering complexity of their mental life. 
It is, however, occasionally realised in national life, and 
then we see how immense is its influence. Such an occa- 
sion is a war for national existence. Consider how, when 
the excesses of the French Revolution excited all the 

195 



196 National Mind and Character 

monarchies of Etirope to attack France, the French na- 
tion, becoming animated with the one strong purpose of 
asserting its right to exist and to choose its own form of 
government, successfully drove back all its enemies and 
rose to a height of power and glory greater than at any 
other period; and how at the same time, its parts were 
welded more firmly together, so that it displayed a high 
degree of unity as well as of efficiency. Having achieved 
this high degree of unity and efficiency, the French nation, 
led on by the ambitions of Napoleon, became aggressive. 
And we are told by the historians that the attacks of 
Napoleon upon the various European peoples, which 
threatened to destroy whatever degree of national life 
those peoples had attained, were like the blows of a 
smith's hammer and resulted in welding together and 
hardening into nations the loosely aggregated races ruled 
over by the various monarchs ; and that in this way these 
attacks initiated the modern period of Nation-States.^ 

War for national existence unifies nations. So long as 
the nation is not utterly shattered and crushed, such war 
greatly develops the national mind; because it makes one 
common purpose dominate the minds of all the citizens. 

We are told that it is a practical maxim of cynical rulers 
to plunge their people into war when they are faced by 
dangerous internal discontents; and the reason usually 
given is that war diverts the attention of the people from 
their domestic grievances. But if it is a national war, a 
war in which the national existence is at stake, it does far 
more than merely divert attention; it binds the nation into 
a harmonious efficient whole by creating a common pur- 
pose; whereas, if the war is not of this order and is waged 
in some distant coimtry and merely for some territorial 
aggrandisement, it has little or no such effect. Thus the 

^ Ramsay Muir, op. cit.^ and J. Holland Rose, The Development of the 
European Nations, 1905. 



A 



Other Conditions of National Life 197 

recent Russo-Japanese war did little or nothing at the 
time to raise the Russian people in the scale of nation- 
hood ; it was followed by a period of national weakness ; the 
national existence was not endangered, the objects of the 
war were too remote from the interests of the mass of 
the people to appeal to them strongly. Whereas the same 
war and the years of preparation for it, following upon the 
previous Chino-Japanese war, have made the Japanese 
one of the most efficient and harmonious nations of the 
world. 

Another striking example of the same principle was the 
formation of modern Bulgaria as a strong Nation-State 
out of a population of quiet peasant proprietors united 
only by spatial proximity and by their racial distinctness 
from the surrounding populations. This creation of a 
strong nation out of a mere population of peasants was in 
the main the work of the war of 1885, by which the un- 
provoked attack of Servia was triumphantly repelled. ^ 

The unity and nationhood of modern Germany is largely 
due to similar causes; and the war of 1871 may fairly be 
said to have led to a further integration of the national 
life of the French people, in spite of their defeat. America 
owes something of the same kind to the Spanish war; and 
the entry of that nation into the Great War, long delayed 
as it was, will probably be found to have had a similar 
effect. The French and Italian nations have undoubtedly 
been welded more firmly by the Great War; while England 
and her sister and daughter nations (with the one sad 
exception of the Irish) have been united, by their co- 
operation in the one great purpose, to a degree which no 
other conceivable event could have achieved and which 
many generations of peaceful industry and enlightened 
political efforts might have failed to approach. 

History offers no parallel to these effects of war; and it 

* J. Holland Rose, op. cit. 



198 National Mind and Character 



1 

on 1 



is difficult or impossible to imagine any other common 
purpose which could exert this binding influence in a 
similar degree. But it is worth while to notice that other 
and minor forms of international rivalry have correspond- 
ing effects. The international rivalry in aeronautics 
affords a contemporary illustration. Perhaps every one 
in this country has felt some degree of interest and satis- 
faction in the achievements of the adventurous spirits of 
our nation who have traversed the Atlantic by air. And 
it is probably largely owing to the prevalence of this na- 
tional pride and purpose that, at a time demanding strict 
national economy, no voice has been raised against the 
enormous current expendittire of the government upon 
aeronautics. 

Another and more important effect of the same kind is 
produced by the assimiption of great national responsibili- 
ties in the way of administration in respect of backward 
peoples and undeveloped territories. The greatest ex- 
ample in history is the responsibility of Great Britain for 
the administration of India, gradually and only haH- 
consciously assiimed, but now keenly felt as at once a 
legitimate ground of national pride and a moral responsi- 
bility that cannot be laid aside. It is like the responsibility 
of the father of a family in its semi-instinctive origin and 
in its effects in steadying and strengthening character, for 
it imposes a responsibility which the nation, like the in- 
dividual, cannot discharge indifferently without seriously 
damaging its reputation and prestige in the eyes of the 
world. Holland owes some of the strength of her nation- 
hood to such influences ; and the assumption by the Amer- 
ican nation of responsibility for the peoples of Cuba and 
of the PhiHppine islands cannot fail to bring them in some 
degree similar moral benefits. ^ 

^ I suggest that international emulation in this sphere may prove to be 
a"^ effective, probably the only effective, substitute for war. 



other Conditions of National Life 199 

Of the five other conditions of the higher development of 
a collective mind, let us notice, first and very briefly, con- 
tinuity of existence, material and formal. Of course every 
nation has this in some degree, but some have it in much 
higher degree than others. The English nation is for- 
tunate in this respect also. It has preserved both its 
formal and its material continuity in very high degree 
throughout many centuries, in fact ever since the Norman 
Conquest. No European nation can compare with it in 
this respect; it is only surpassed by China and perhaps 
Japan. The French nation has preserved its material 
continuity, its population and territory, in high degree. 
But the Great Revolution cut across and destroyed to a 
great extent its formal continuity, so that, as is sometimes 
said, the French nation has cut itself off from its past and 
made a new start ; although, in doing so, it did not get rid 
of its highly centralised system of administration. The 
modern Italian and German nations are quite recent 
growths, their formal continuity having been subject to 
many interruptions. Spain, with her almost insular posi- 
tion, might have had continuity; but it was greatly dis- 
turbed by the imperial ambitions of her rulers in the six- 
teenth century and by the expulsion of the Moors. Greece 
is a striking example of loss of both material and formal 
continuity. The population of ancient Greece, which put 
her in the van of civilisation, has been largely abolished 
and supplanted by a different race; and her formal con- 
tinuity also has suffered a number of complete ruptures. 

Now material and formal continuity is, as we said, the 
essential presupposition of all the other main conditions 
of development of the collective mind. On it depends the 
strength of custom and tradition and, to a very great 
extent, the strength of national sentiment. It is, therefore, 
a principal condition of national stability; from it arise all 
the great conservative tendencies of the nation, all the 



200 National Mind and Character 

forces that resist change; accordingly, the more complete 
and long enduring such continuity has been in the past, 
the greater is the prospect of its prolongation in the future. 
It is owing to the unbroken continuity of the EngHsh 
nation through so long a period that its organisation is so 
stable, its unwritten constitution so effective, at once 
stable and plastic, its national sentiment so strong, its 
complex uncoded system of judge-made law so nearly in 
harmony with popular feeling and therefore so respected. 
National organisation resting upon this basis of custom 
and traditional sentiment is the only kind that is really 
stable, that is not liable to be suddenly overthrown by 
internal upheavals or impacts from without. For it alone 
is rooted in the minds of all citizens in the forms of habit 
and sentiment. All other organisation is imposed by 
authority. 

In this respect modern England and Germany offer a 
striking contrast that forces itself upon the most casual 
observation. As regards the mass of the people, the posi- 
tion of each individual in the organism of the German 
nation is officially determined by the written and codified 
law of the State; all personal status and relations are 
formally determined by official positions in this recently 
created system. Almost every individual carries about 
some badge or uniform indicating his position within the 
system. In England, the status and relations of individ- 
uals are determined by factors a thousand times more 
subtle and complex, involving many vaguely conceived 
and undefined traditions and sentiments. In Germany, 
it is almost true to say, if a man has no official position he 
has no position at all. In England, the comparatively 
few persons who have official positions have also their 
social positions by which their private relations are deter- 
mined. They are officials only in their offices; whereas 
the German official is an official everywhere. 



^1 



other Conditions of National Life 201 

Other important topics we have to consider are (i) the 
organisation of the national mind; (2) the national self- 
consciousness ; (3) the interaction of the nation as a whole 
with other nations. All these we may advantageously 
consider in the Hght of an analogy, the analogy between 
the individual mind and the collective mind of the nation. 
This is a much closer and more illuminating analogy than 
that between the nation, or society, and the material 
organism. The latter analogy has been developed in de- 
tail by H. Spencer, Schaffle,^ and others; it has now fallen 
into some disrepute. It has no doubt a certain value, but 
it is popularly used in a way that leads to quite unjusti- 
fiable conclusions. Of these fallacies by far the most 
commonly accepted is that which asserts that, just as 
every animal organism inevitably grows old and dies, so 
too must nations. 

This is one of the most popular dogmas of amateur 
philosophers, and so distinguished a statesman as the late 
Lord Salisbury gave it countenance; while Mr. A. J. Bal- 
four in his recent Sidgwick Memorial Lecture^ courageous- 
ly breaks away and proposes to substitute for senility 
as the cause of decay the word decadence — a proposal which 
merely implies that he trusts less to the analogical argu- 
ment from the material organism and more to empirical 
induction, to the observation of the fact that so many 
nations have decayed. 

All this serves to illustrate the dangers of analogy. We 
need no special cause to account for the fall and the decay 
of nations, no obscure principle of senility or decadence; 
the wonderful thing is that they exist at all; and what 
needs explanation is not so much the decay of some, but 
rather the long persistence of others. 

Let us turn, then, to the analogy between the organisa- 
tion of the national collective mind and that of the in- 

' Bau und Lehen des socialen Korpers. * Decadence. 



202 National Mind and Character 

dividual mind, which, I say, is so much closer and more 
illuminating than that between a society and a bodily 
organisation. 

The actions of the individual organism are the expres- 
sion of its mental constitution or organisation; in some 
creatures this organisation is almost wholly innate — the 
organisation consists of a number of reflex and instinctive 
dispositions each specialised for bringing about a special 
kind of behaviour under certain circumstances. Such old 
established racial dispositions with their special tendencies 
have their place in more complexly developed minds ; but 
in these their operations are complicated and modified by 
the life of ideas, and by a variety of habits developed 
under the guidance of ideas and in the light of individual 
experience. 

The enduring reflex and instinctive dispositions of the 
individual mind we may liken to the established institu- 
tions of a nation, such as the army and navy, the post 
office, the judicial and the administrative systems of 
officials. These, like the instincts, are specialised execu- 
tive organisations working in relative independence of 
one another, each discharging some specialised function 
adapted to satisfy some constantly recurring need of the 
whole organism. In both cases such semi-independent 
organisations, the instincts or the institutions, are rela- 
tively fixed and stable, and they work, if left to themselves, 
quasi-mechanically along old established lines, without 
intelligent adaptation to new circumstances ; and they are 
incapable of self -adaptation. In both cases, the mental 
organisation is in part materialised, the instinct in the form 
of specialised nervous structure, the institution in the form 
of the material organisation essential to its efficient action, 
the buildings, the printed codes, the whole material 
apparatus of complex national administration. In both 
cases, the actions in which they play their part are not 



4 



other Conditions of National Life 203 

purely mechanical but to some extent truly psychical — 
though of a low order. 

If we accept the view, which is held by many, that 
instincts and reflexes are the semi-mechanised results of 
successive mental adaptations effected by the mental 
efforts of successive generations, then the analogy is still 
closer; for the permanent national institutions are also 
the accumulated semi-mechanised products of the efforts 
at adaptation of many generations. 

The. organisation of some nations resembles that of the 
minds of those animals whose behaviour is purely instinc- 
tive. Such is a nation whose organisation takes the form 
of a rigid caste system. Each caste performs its special 
functions in the prescribed manner in relative independ- 
ence of all the others. And, in both cases, the organisation 
of the mind includes no means of bringing the different 
fixed tendencies or dispositions into harmonious co-opera- 
tion in the face of unusual circumstances. The whole 
system lacks plasticity and adaptability; for it is relatively 
mechanical and of a low degree of integration. Any true 
adaptation of the whole organism by mental effort is 
impossible in both cases. 

The higher type of individual mind is characterised by 
the development of the intellectual organisation by means 
of which the activities of the various instincts, the execu- 
tive organisations, may be brought into co-operation with, 
or duly subordinated to, one another; and the activities 
of each such individual may be further adapted to meet 
novel combinations of circumstances not provided for in 
the innate organisation ; hence, the activities of the whole 
organism, instead of being a succession of quasi-mechanical 
actions, and of crude conflicts between the impulses or 
tendencies of the different instincts, reveal a higher degree 
of harmony of the parts, a greater integration of the whole 
system, and a much greater adaptability to novel circum- 



204 National Mind sind Character 

stances; while, at the same time, the behaviour of the 
whole, in face of any one of the situations provided for by- 
innate organisation or instinct, is liable to be less sure and 
perfect than in the case of the less complex, less highly 
evolved type of mind. 

Exactly the same is true of the more highly evolved type 
of national mind. Like the lower type, it has its executive 
institutions and hierarchies of officials, organised for the 
carrying out of specialised tasks subserving the economy of 
the whole. But, in addition, it has a dehberative organ- 
isation which renders possible a play of ideas; and, through 
this, the operations of the institutions are modified and 
controlled in detail and are harmonised in a way which 
constitutes a higher integration of the whole. 

In both cases ideas and judgments reached by the de- 
liberative processes can only become effective in the world 
of things and conduct by setting to work, or calling 
into play, one or more of the executive dispositions or 
institutions. 

In both cases, ideas and the deliberative processes, 
which to some extent control the operations of the innate 
or traditional dispositions, produce, in so doing, some 
permanent modification of them in the direction of adapta- 
tion to deal with novel circumstances ; so that the disposi- 
tions or institutions grow and change under the guidance 
of the deliberative processes, slowly becoming better 
adapted for the expression of the ruling ideas ; they become 
better instruments, and more completely at the service of 
ideas and of the will. 

Just as the animal, on the instinctive plane of mental 
life, displays a very efficient activity in the special situa- 
tion which brings some one instinct into play, so any one 
caste of a caste-nition may perform its function under 
normal circumstances with great efficiency, the priestly 
caste its priestly function, the warrior caste, or the caste 



other Conditions of National Life 205 

of sweepers, its function ; and, in both cases, the develop- 
ment of the deliberative organisation is apt to interfere to 
some extent with the perfect execution of these specialised 
functions. 

Again, in the individual mind, adaptation of conduct to 
novel circumstances, or to secure improved action in 
familiar circumstances, requires the direction of the at- 
tention, that is the concentration of the whole energy of 
the mind, upon the task; whereas, when the new mode of 
behaviour is often repeated, it becomes more and more 
automatic; for, owing to the formation of new nervous 
organisation, the attention is set free for other tasks of 
adaptation. Just in the same way new modes of national 
behaviour are only effected when the attention of the 
nation's mind is turned upon the situation; whereas, with 
recurrence of the need for any such novel mode of action, 
there is formed some special executive organisation, say a 
Colonial Office, or an Unemployed Central Committee, or 
an Imperial Conference, which deals with it in a more or 
less routine fashion, and which, as it becomes perfected, 
needs less and less to be controlled and guided by national 
attention and therefore operates in the margin of the field 
of consciousness of the national mind, while public atten- 
tion is set free to turn itself to other tasks of national 
adaptation. 

We may also regard the customs of a nation as analog- 
ous with the habits of the individual, if (for the sake of the 
analogy) we accept the view that instincts are habits that 
have become hereditary; for custom is an informal mode 
in which routine behaviour is determined, and it tends to 
lead on to, and to become embodied in, formal institutions; 
it is like habit, a transition stage between new adapta- 
tion and perfected organisation. Individual adaptation, 
habit and instinct are parallel to national adaptation, 
custom, and legal institution. 



2o6 National Mind and Character 

At the risk of wearying the reader, I will refer to one last 
point of the analogy. Individual minds become more 
completely integrated in proportion as they achieve a full 
self-consciousness, in proportion as the idea of the self 
becomes rich in content and the nucleus of a strong senti- 
ment generating impulses that control and override im- 
pulses of all other sources. In a similar way, the national 
mind becomes more completely integrated in proportion 
as it achieves full self -consciousness, that is, in proportion 
as the idea of the nation becomes widely diffused among 
the individual minds, becomes rich in content and the 
nucleus of a strong sentiment that supplies motives ca- 
pable of overriding and controlling all other motives. 

Consider now in the light of this analogy the principal 
types of national organisation. The organisation of some 
peoples is wholly the product of the conflicts of blind 
impulses and purely individual volitions working through 
long ages. This is true of many peoples that have not 
arrived at a national self-consciousness or, as the French 
say, a social consciousness, and are not held in servitude 
by a despotic power. It is a natural stage of evolution 
which corresponds to the stage of the higher mammals in 
the scale of evolution of the individual mind. A nation 
of this sort has no capacity for collective deliberation and 
volitional action. What collective mental life it has is on 
the plane of impulse and unregulated desire. Such ideas 
as are widely accepted may determine collective action; 
but such action is not the result of the weighing of ideas 
in the light of self-consciousness; hence they are little 
adapted to promote the welfare of the nation, and, because 
there is no organisation adapted for their expression, they 
can be but ifnperfectly realised. 

We may perhaps take China (as she was until recently) 
as the highest type of a nation of this sort. Hers was a 
complex and vast organisation consisting of very ancient 



Other Conditions of National Life 207 

institutions and customs, slowly evolved by the conflict 
of impulses and in part imposed by despotic power and 
individual wills; not formed by a national will under the 
guidance of national self-consciousness.' Hence China 
was incapable of vigorous national thought or volition, 
and its nearest approach to collective action was expressed 
in such blind impulsive actions as the Taeping Rebellion 
or the Boxer Rising. This last seems to have been 
prompted by a dawning national self-consciousness which 
had not, however, so moulded the national organisation 
as to make it an efficient instrument of its will. 

Of other nations the organisation is, in part only, a 
natural growth, having been, in large part, impressed upon 
it by an external power. Such is the case in all those many 
instances in which a foreign power of higher social organ- 
isation has conquered and successfully governed for a long 
period a people of lower civilisation. We may see a 
parallel to this type in the mind of an individual whose 
behaviour is in the main the expression of a number of 
habits engendered by a severe discipline which has con- 
tinued from his earliest years, and which has never per- 
mitted the free development of his natural tendencies and 
character. Such was England under the feudal system 
imposed upon her by her Norman conquerors. Such also 
France under Louis XIV. Such was Russia when the 
Varegs, the conquering Northmen, imposed on the almost 
unorganised mass of Slavs their rule and a national organ- 
isation; and such it remained up to the outbreak of the 
Great War, a mass of men in whom the national conscious- 
ness was only just beginning to glimmer here and there, 
crudely organised by the bureaucratic power of a few. 
Even in the minds of these few the national consciousness 
and purpose was but little developed. Individual pur- 

^ Cf . A. Smith's Village Life in China. The author insists on the lack of 
public spirit, of the idea of action pro bono publico. 



2o8 National Mind and Character 

poses and individual self-consciousness predominated. 
Hence Russia had no capacity for national thought and 
action; and when, as recently, ideas stirred the masses to 
action, their actions were those of unorganised crowds, 
impulsive and ineffective; the ends were but vaguely 
conceived, the means were not deliberately chosen, or, if 
so chosen, found no executive organisation for the effective 
expression of the collective purpose. 

In such nations the organisation, which has been in the 
main created by a small governing class, is adapted only 
for the execution of its purposes, and not at all for the 
formation of a national mind and the expression of the 
collective will. The organisation consists primarily in a 
system for the collecting of taxes and the compulsory ser- 
vice of a large army. The revenue is raised for two 
primary purposes — the support of the governing class or 
caste in luxury and the support of the army ; and the end 
for which the army is maintained is primarily the gather- 
ing of the taxes, and the further extension of the tax- 
collecting system over larger areas and populations — a 
vicious circle. On the other hand, the conditions which 
tend to the formation of national mind and character (which 
would have quite other ends than these) are naturally 
suppressed as completely as possible by the governing few. 

Russian history in modem times exemplifies these 
principles in the clearest and most complete manner. 
The effects of this sort of organisation were very clearly 
illustrated by Count Tolstoi's articles in the Fortnightly 
Review,^ in which he expressed as his social creed and 
ideal a complete anarchy to be achieved by passive resist- 
ance; denied that nations have or can have any existence; 
and asserted that the idea of a nation is as fictitious as it is 
pernicious. He had in mind only this type of organisation 
of a people, which hardly entitles it to be called a nation. 

^ 1906. 



other Conditions of National Life 209 

And the same considerations explain the wide prevalence 
of philosophic anarchy in Russia. 

Another type of national organisation results when the 
natural evolution of the national mind and character has 
been artificially and unhealthily forced by the pressure of 
the external environment of a people, when the need of 
national self-preservation and self-assertion compels the 
mass of the people to submit to an organisation which is 
neither the product of a natural evolution through the 
conflict of individual wills, nor the expression of the gen- 
eral mind and will, nor is altogether imposed upon it for 
the individual purposes of the few, but is a system planned 
by the few for the good of the whole, and by them imposed 
upon the whole. This is the kind of organisation of which 
a modern army stands as the extreme type and which is 
best represented among modern nations by Germany as 
she was before the War. 

Under such a system there appears inevitably a tend- 
ency rigorously to subordinate the welfare of individuals 
to that of the nation as a whole. And that was just the 
state of affairs in Germany. German political philosophy 
showed the opposite extreme from Tolstoi's ; the individual 
existed for the nation only. Hence we find this condition 
of affairs justified by such writers as Bluntschli, ^ Treitsch- 
ke and Bernhardi, who represent the State as having an 
existence and a system of rights superior to that of all 
individuals; and we see attempts to justify the subordina- 
tion of individual interests by means of the doctrine of the 

collective consciousness. ' ' ^ 

In such States as that of the foregoing type the one kind 
of organisation is alone highly developed, namely the 
executive organisation ; while the deliberative organisation 
is very imperfect and is repressed and discouraged by the 

' In his Theory of the State. 

* By Schaeffle, op. cit., and all the school of German "idealism." 



210 National Mind aind Character 

governing power. Such a State is likely to appear very 
strong in all its relations with other States, and its mate- 
rial organisation may be developed in an effective and rapid 
way, as we have seen in pre-war Germany. But its ac- 
tions are not the expression of the national will and are 
not the outcome of the general mind. They are designed 
by the minds of the few for the good not of all, but of the 
whole, the good, that is, not of individuals but of the State. 

Organisation of this type is not of high stabiHty, in spite 
of its appearance of strength and its efficiency for certain 
limited purposes, such as industrial organisation and the 
promotion and diffusion of material well-being. In a 
State so organised there inevitably grows up an antagon- 
ism between individual rights and interests and the rights 
and interests of the State. It is psychologically unsound. 
This fact was revealed in Germany by the tremendous 
growth of social democracy, which was the protest against 
the subordination of individual welfare to that of the State. 
The defect of such organisation was illustrated by the fact 
that Germany, though its well-governed population in- 
creased rapidly, for many years continued to lose great 
numbers of its population to other countries. For the 
mass of the people felt itself to be not so much of the 
State as under it. And it is, I think, obvious that 
the advent of a bad and stupid monarch might easily 
have brought on a revolution at any time. 

The inherent weakness of the system induced the 
governing power to all sorts of extreme measures directed 
to maintain its equilibrium and cohesion. Among such 
State actions the gravest were perhaps the deliberate 
falsification of history by the servile historians and the 
suppression and distortion of news by the press at the 
command and desire of the State. The expropriation of 
the Polish landowners and the treatment of Alsace-Lor- 
raine were other striking manifestations of the imperfect 



other Conditions of National Life 211 

development of the national mind and of the correspond- 
ing practice and philosophy of the State-craft which the 
world has learnt to describe as Prussian. 

The organisation of pre-war Germany was, then, very 
similar to that of an army and was efficient in a similar 
way, that is to say for the attainment of particular im- 
mediate ends. In a wider view, such national organisation 
is of a lower nature than that of England or France or 
America; for the ends or purposes of a nation are remote, 
they transcend the vision of the present and cannot be 
defined in terms of material prosperity or military power; 
and only the development of the national mind, as a na-^ 
tural and spontaneous growth, can give a prospect of 
continued progress towards those indefinable ends. Ger- 
many was organised from above for the attainment of a 
particular end, namely material prosperity and power 
among the peoples of the world; and, as the bulk of her 
population had been led to accept this narrow national 
purpose, the organisation of the nation, like that of an 
army, was extremely effective for the purpose. It gave 
her a great advantage as against the other nations, among 
whom the lack of any such clear-cut purpose in the minds 
of all was a principal difficulty in the way of effective na- 
tional thought and action. For a like reason the existence 
of a nation organised in this way is a constant threat to the 
nations of higher type; and, as we have seen, it may com- 
pel them at any time to revert to or adopt, temporarily at 
least and so far as they are able, an organisation of the 
lower and more immediately effective kind. And this 
threat was the justification of the nations of the Entente, 
when they demanded a radical change in this political organ- 
isation of Germany. In a similar way, in the past, the 
Huns, the Turks, and the Arabs, peoples organised primarily 
for war and conquest, had to be destroyed as nations if 
the evolution of nations of higher type was to go forward. 



\ 



CHAPTER XI 
The Will of the Nation^ 

ROUSSEAU, in his famous treatise, Le Contrat Social, 
wrote : ' ' There is often a great difference between 
the will of all and the general will; the latter looks 
only to the common interest; the former looks to private 
interest, and is nothing but a sum of individual wills; but 
take away from these same wills the plus and minus that 
cancel one another and there remains, as the sum of the 
differences, the general will." ''Sovereignty is only the 
exercise of the general will." That is to say, a certain 
ntmiber of men will the general good, while most men will 
only their private good; the latter neutrahse one another, 
while the former co-operate to form an effective force. 

Dr. Bosanquet, " criticising Rousseau's doctrine, says that 
the general will is expressed by the working of the institu- 
tions of the community which embody its dominant ideas ; 
that no one man really grasps the nature and relations of 
the whole society and its tendencies; that the general will 
is thus unconscious (by which he seems to mean that the 
nation is unconscious of itself and of its ends or purposes) ; 
and he goes on to say that the general will is the product 
of practical activities making for nearer smaller ends, and 

^ The substance of this chapter was contained in a paper entitled "The 
Will of the People," read before the Sociological Society and published in 
the Sociological Review, 19 12. 

^ Philosophical Theory of the State and Article in International Journal of 
Ethics, 1907. 

212 



The Will of the Nation 213 

that its harmony depends on the fact that the activities of 
each individual are parts of a systematic whole. 

Bosanquet's theory amounts to a justification of the 
old individualist laissez faire doctrine — the doctrine that 
the good of the whole is best achieved by giving freest 
possible scope to the play and conflict of individual pur- 
poses and strivings — the philosophic radicalism of Ben- 
tham and Mill, which teaches that, if each man honestly 
and efficiently pursues his private ends, the welfare of the 
State somehow results. How this systematic whole which 
is the State arises he does not explain ; and it seems to me 
that Bosanquet leaves unsolved that difficulty which, as we 
saw, led Schiller and others to postulate an external power 
guiding each people — the difficulty, if we assume that in- 
dividual wills strive only after private egoistic ends, of ex- 
plaining how the good of the whole is nevertheless achieved. 

In all societies many general changes result, and in some 
nations no doubt the good of the whole is achieved in a 
measure by fortunate accident, in the way Bosanquet 
described — namely, by the interplay of individual wills 
working for near individual ends. But, I think, it is 
improper to say that in such a case any general will 
exists. Such a nation, if it displays any collective activity, 
only does so in an impulsive blind way which is not true 
volition, but is comparable rather with instinctive action; 
for, as we have seen, self-consciousness is essential to 
volition ; a truly volitional action is one which issues from 
the contemplation of some end represented in relation 
to the idea of the self and found to be desirable. And the 
changes of a society which result in the way Bosanquet 
claims as the expression of the general will are unforeseen 
and unwilled; they are no more the expression and effects 
of a general will than are the movements of a billiard ball 
struck simultaneously by two or more men each of whom 
aims at a different position. 



\ 



214 National Mind and Character 

Bosanquet maintains that the national will is uncon- 
scious of its ends; but that the life of a nation does express 
a general will, in virtue of the fact that the individuals, who 
will private and less general ends than the ends of the 
nation, live in a system of relations that constitutes them 
an organism; and that it is in virtue of this organic system 
of relations that the individual volitions work out to an 
unforeseen unpurposed resultant, which he calls the end 
willed by the general will. He makes of this organic unity 
the essential difference between a mere crowd and a society 
or nation — defining an organism or organic unity as a 
system of parts the capacities and functions of each of 
which are determined by the general nature and principle 
of the whole group. 

That is an excellent definition of an organism; and we 
have recognised fully the importance of organisation in 
national life, consisting in specialisation of the parts such 
that each part is adapted to perform some one function 
that subserves the life of the whole, while itself dependent 
upon the proper functioning of all other parts. 

We may admit too that, in proportion as this specialisa- 
tion of functions is carried further, organic unity is pro- 
moted because the life of the whole becomes more in- 
timately dependent on the life of each part, and each part 
more intimately and completely dependent on the life of 
the whole. 

But unity of this sort is characteristic of all animal bod- 
ies; and, though the mind has this kind of organic unity, 
it acquires, in proportion as self -consciousness develops, 
over and above this kind of unity, a unity of an altogether 
new and unique kind ; a unity which consists in the whole 
(or the self) being present to consciousness, whether clearly 
or obscurely, during almost every moment of thought, and 
pervading and playing some part in the determination of 
the course of thought and action. 



The Will of the Nation 215 

Now, the national mind also has both the lower and the 
higher kinds of unity. In both cases — that is, in the 
development both of the individual and of the national 
mind — a certain degree of organic unity must be achieved, 
before self-consciousness can develop and begin to play 
its part; but in both cases, when once it has begun to 
operate, self-consciousness goes on greatly to increase the 
organic unity, to increase the specialisation of functions 
and the systematic interdependence of the parts. 

Consider a single illustration of this parallelism of the 
individual with the national mind. Take the assthetic 
faculty. In the individual mind there develops a certain 
capacity for finding pleasure in certain objects and im- 
pressions, such as young children and even the animals 
have; and then, with the growth of self -consciousness, 
the individual sets himself deliberately to cultivate this 
faculty, to specialise it along particular lines and to exer- 
cise it as something apart from his other mental functions ; 
while, nevertheless, it becomes for him, in proportion as it 
is developed and specialised, more and more an essential 
part of his total experience. Just so there spontaneously 
develop in a people some rudimentary assthetic practices 
and traditions and some class of persons, say the bards, 
who are more skilled than other men in ministering to the 
aesthetic demands of their fellows. Then, as national 
self-consciousness develops, the place and value of these 
functions in the system of national life becomes explicitly 
recognised, and they are deliberately fostered by the 
establishment of national institutions, schools of art, 
academies of letters and music, the award of public titles 
and honours and so forth; whereby the specialisation of 
these national functions is increased, their dependence on 
the life of the whole rendered more intimate, and, at the 
same time, the life of the whole rendered more dependent 
upon the life of these parts, because the richer assthetic 



2i6 National Mind and Character 

development of the parts reacts upon the whole, diffusing 

itself through and elevating the Hfe of the whole. 

Bosanquet recognises in national life only the lower kind 
of unity and not the unity of self-consciousness. He seems 
to reject the notion of national self -consciousness, on the 
ground that the life of a nation is so complex that it cannot 
be fully and adequately reflected in the consciousness of 
any individual; yet in this respect the difference between 
the national mind and the individual mind is one of degree 
only and not of kind. In the individual mind also, even 
the most highly developed and self-conscious, the capac- 
ities and dispositions and tendencies that make up the 
whole mind are never fully and adequately present to 
consciousness; the individual never knows himself ex- 
haustively, though he may continually progress towards 
a more nearly complete self-knowledge. Just so the na- 
tional mind may progress towards a more complete self- 
knowledge, and, though at the present time no nation has 
attained more than a very imperfect self-knowledge, yet 
the process is accelerating rapidly among the more ad- 
vanced nations; and such increasing self-knowledge 
promises to become the dominating factor in the life of 
nations, as it is in the lives of all men, save the most 
primitive. 

Suppose that all those conditions making for national 
unity which we have considered in the foregoing chapters 
were realised, but that nevertheless all men continued to 
be moved only by self -regarding motives, or by those which 
have reference to the welfare of themselves and their 
family circle or to any ends less comprehensive than the 
welfare of the whole nation. We could not then properly 
speak of the tendencies resulting from the interplay and 
the conflict of all these individual wills as expressions of 
the general will, as Bosanquet and others have done, even 
though the organic unity of the whole secured a harmo- 



The Will of the Nation 217 

nious resultant national activity, if such a thing were 
possible. But there is no reason to suppose that such a 
thing is possible. 

I think we may say that it is only in so far as the idea of 
the people or nation as a whole is present to the conscious- 
ness of individuals and determines their actions that a 
nation in the proper sense of the word can exist or ever has 
existed. Without this factor any population inhabiting 
a given territory remains either a mere horde or a popu- 
lation of slaves under a despotism. Neither can be called 
a nation; wherever a nation has appeared in the history 
of the world, the consciousness of itself as a nation has been 
an essential condition of its existence and still more of its 
progress. 

We may see this, even more clearly, in the case of the 
smaller aggregations of men, the smaller social units, the 
family, the clan, the tribe. The family is a family only so 
long as it is conscious of itself as a family, and only in 
virtue of that self-consciousness and of the part which this 
idea and the sentiments gathered about it play in deter- 
mining the actions of each member. How carefully such 
family consciousness is sometimes fostered and how great 
a part it plays in social life is common knowledge. In the 
early stages of Greek and Roman history, the family 
consciousness was the dominant social force which long 
succeeded in overriding and preventing the development 
of any larger social consciousness. Just as the gens played 
this part in early Rome, so the clan has played a similar 
part elsewhere, for example in the highlands of Scotland. 
Such peoples form the strongest nations. 

Just so with the tribe. It exists as a tribe only because, 
and in so far as, it is conscious of itself, and in so far as the 
idea of the tribe and devotion to its service determines the 
actions of individuals. The mere fact of the possession of 
a tribal name suffices to prove the existence of this self- 



2i8 National Mind and Character 

consciousness. And, as a matter of fact, tribal self- 
consciousness is in many cases extremxcly strongly devel- 
oped; the idea of the tribe, of its rights and powers, of 
its past and its future plays a great part among warlike 
savages; and an injury done to the tribe, or an insult 
offered to it, will often be kept in mind for many years, 
even for generations, and will be avenged when an oppor- 
tunity occurs, even in spite of the certainty of death to 
many individuals and the risk of extermination of the 
whole tribe. 

The federation of Iroquois tribes to form a rudimentary 
nation seems to have been due to a self-conscious collec- 
tive purpose. And, when other tribes become fused to 
form nations, the same holds true. Consider the Hebrew 
nation, one of the earliest historical examples of a number 
of allied tribes becoming fused to a nation. Surely the 
idea of the nation as the chosen people of Jehovah played 
a vital part in its consolidation, implanted and fostered 
as it was by a succession of great teachers, the prophets. 
Their work was to implant this idea and this sentiment 
strongly in the minds of the people, to create and foster 
this traditional sentiment by the aid of supernatural 
sanctions. The national self-consciousness thus formed 
has continued to be not only one factor, but almost the 
only factor or condition, of the continued existence of the 
Jewish people as a people, or at any rate the one funda- 
mental condition on which all the others are founded — 
their exclusive religion, their objection to intermarriage 
with outsiders, their hope of a future restoration of the 
fortunes of the nation, and so forth. 

And the same is true of every real nation; its existence 
and its power are grounded in its consciousness of itself, 
the idea of the nation as a dominant factor in the minds of 
the individuals. The dominant sentiment which centres 
about that idea is very different in the various nations. 



The Will of the Nation 219 

It may be chiefly pride in the nation's past history, as in 
Spain; or hope for its future, as in Japan; or the need of 
self-assertion in the present, as in pre-war Germany. 

The political history of Europe in the nineteenth cen- 
tury is chiefly the history of the national actions that have 
sprung from increase of national self -consciousness result- 
ing from the spread of education, from the improvement of 
means of communication within each people and from 
increase of intercourse between nations. The opening 
pages were the wars in which the French people, suddenly 
aroused to an intense national consciousness, successfully 
resisted and drove back all the other European powers. 
Of other leading events the formation of modern Italy 
and of modern Germany, of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, were 
results of the awakening of national self-consciousness. ^ 

The resistance of the Japanese to the Russians and their 
victory over them were in the fullest sense the immediate 
outcome of the idea of the Japanese nation in the minds 
of all its people, leading to a strong collective volition for 
the greater power, glory, and advancement of the nation. 
The recent unrest in China is recognised on all hands to be 
the expression of a dawning national self-consciousness. 
In Europe, Poland, Finland, Hungary, and Ireland ex- 
emplify its workings very clearly in recent years. The 
Magyars were not oppressed by the Austrians. They, 
economically and individually, had nothing material to 
gain by a separation from Austria; and in separating 
themselves they would have risked much, their lives, and 
their material welfare; yet the idea of the Magyar nation 
impelled them to it. The Poles of Germany were not 
rebellious because they were ill-treated and their affairs 
maladministered. If they could and would have cast out 
from their minds the idea of the Polish nation, they might 

* Cf . J. H. Rose, The Development of the European Nations and Ramsay 
Muir, Nationalism and Internationalism. 



220 National Mind and Character 

have comfortably shared in the marvellously advancing 
material prosperity of Germany. But they were severely 
treated by the Germans, because they were moved by this 
idea and this sentiment ; and the bad treatment it brought 
upon them did but render the idea more vividly, more uni- 
versally, present to the consciousness of all, even of the 
little children at school, and, by inflaming the passions 
which have their root in the national sentiment, strength' 
ened that sentiment. 

But for the idea of the Boer nation and the dawning 
national sentiment, the late Boer war would never have 
occurred; and that sentiment was, as in the case of the 
Japanese in their late war, the principal source of the great 
energy displayed by the Boers and of such success as they 
achieved. 

Even in India, the proposal to divide Bengal has sud- 
denly discovered among the Bengalese, the most submis- 
sive part of the population, the part which has seemed 
most devoid of national spirit, the existence and the 
importance as a political factor of the idea of the Bengalese 
as a people and of sentiments centred upon that idea. 

The rapid increase of national self -consciousness among 
the peoples of the world and the increasing part every- 
where played by the sentiment for national existence are 
in short the dominant facts in the present period of world 
history; their influence overshadows all others. 

Since, then, any nation exists only in virtue of the ex- 
istence of the idea of the nation in the minds of the 
individuals of whom it is composed, and in virtue of the 
influence of this idea upon their actions, and since this 
idea plays so great a part in shaping the history of the 
world, it is absurd to maintain that the general will is 
but the blind resultant of the conflict of individual wills 
striving after private ends and unconscious of the ends or 
purposes of the nation. In opposition to such a view, we 



The Will of the Nation 221 

must maintain that a population seeking only individual 
ends cannot form or continue to be a nation, though all the 
other conditions we have noticed be present ; that a nation 
is real and vigorous in proportion as its consciousness of 
its self is full and clear. In fact national progress and 
power and success depend in chief part upon the fulness 
and the extension, the depth and width of this self- 
consciousness — the accuracy and fulness with which each 
individual mind reflects the whole ; and upon the strength 
of the sentiments which are centred upon it and which lead 
men to act for the good of the whole, to postpone private 
to public ends. And the same holds good of all the many 
forms of corporate life within the nation. Each individ- 
ual's sense of duty, in so far as it is a true sense of duty, 
and not a fictitious sense due merely to superstitious fear 
or to habit formed by suggestion and compulsion, is 
chiefly founded upon the consciousness of the society of 
which he forms a part, upon the group spirit that binds 
him to his fellows and makes him one with them. And the 
nations in which this national self -consciousness is strong- 
est and most widely diffused will be the successful nations. 
Reflect a little on these facts vouched for by General 
Sir Ian Hamilton. No soldier of the Japanese army, none 
even of the coolies, would accept anything in the shape of a 
tip even for honest services rendered, lest the purity of his 
motives should be sullied; and each man always went into 
action not merely prepared to die if necessary, but actually 
prepared and expecting to conquer and to die for the good 
and glory of his nation. He writes * ' Japanese officers have 
constantly to explain to their men that they must not 
consider the main object of the battle is to get killed."* 
And he goes on to show that they are not fanatics, are not 
inspired by any idea of the supernatural or by any hope of 
rewards after death, as is usually the case of the Moslem 

« The Russo-Japanese War, Vol. 11, p. 25. 



222 National Mind and Character 

soldier who displays an equal recklessness of life. Surely, 
if in any nation the national consciousness could inspire 
and maintain all classes of its people in all relations of life 
to this high level of strenuous self-sacrifice for the welfare 
of the nation, that nation would soon predominate over all 
others, and be impregnably strong, no matter what defects 
of individual and national character it might display. 

The idea of the nation is, then, a bond between its 
members over and above all those bonds of custom, of 
habit, of economic interdependence, of law and of self- 
interest, of S3rmpathy, of imitation, of collective emotion 
and thought, which inevitably arise among a homogeneous 
people occupying any defined area; and it is the most 
powerful and essential of them ail. As Fouillee put it, 
the essential characteristic of human society is that ''it is 
an organism which realises itself in conceiving and in 
willing its own existence. Any collection of men becomes 
a society in the only true sense of the word, when all the 
men conceive more or less clearly the type of organic whole 
which they can form by uniting themselves and when they 
effectively unite themselves under the determining in- 
fluence of this conception. Society is then an organism 
which exists because it has been thought and willed, it is 
an organism born of an idea."^ In this sense Society has 
never yet been perfectly realised, but it is the ideal towards 
which social evolution tends. 

National group self -consciousness plays, then, an all- 
important part in the life of nations, is in fact the actual, 
the most essential constitutive factor of every nation; and 
nationhood or the principal of nationality is the dominant 
note of world history in the present epoch ; that is to say, 
the desire and aspiration to achieve nationhood, or to 
strengthen and advance the life of the nation, is the most 
powerful motive underlying the collective actions of 

^La Science Sociale contemporaine, p. 115. 



The Will of the Nation 223 

almost all civilised and even of semi-civilised mankind; 
and the consequent rivalry between nations overshadows 
every other feature of modern world history, and is con- 
vulsing and threatening to destroy the whole of modern 
civilisation. It is surely well worthy of serious study. 
Yet, owing to the backward and neglected state of psy- 
chology, not only is this study neglected, but, as we have 
seen, some of our leading political philosophers have not 
yet even realised the essential nature of the problem; 
and many of the historians, economists, and political 
writers are even further from a grasp of its nature. They 
have been forced by the prominence and urgency of the 
facts to recognise what they call the principle of national- 
ity; and even now the majority of them are demanding 
that, in the European settlement and in the affairs of 
the world in general, the principle of nationality shall be 
given the leading place and the decisive voice. But they 
do not recognise that the understanding of this principle, 
this all-powerful political factor, is primarily and purely 
a psychological problem. We find them, in discussing the 
nature of nations and the conditions of nationality, per- 
haps mentioning the psychological view of nations as a 
curious aberration of a few academic cranks, from which 
they turn to discover the true secret of nationality in such 
considerations as geographical boundaries, race, language, 
history, and above all economic factors; they do not see 
that each and all of these conditions, real and important 
though they are and have been in shaping the history and 
determining the existence of nations, only play their parts 
indirectly by affecting men's minds, their beliefs, opinions, 
and sentiments, especially by favouring or repressing the 
development in each people of the idea of the nation. 

The all-dominant influence of the idea of the nation, I 
insist, is not a theory or a speculative suggestion, it is a 
literal and obvious fact. Let every other one of the 



224 National Mind and Character 

favouring conditions of nationality, the geographical, 
historical, economic be realised by a population; yet, if 
that population has no collective self -consciousness, is not 
strongly actuated to collective volition by the group spirit, 
it will remain not a nation, but a mere aggregate of in- 
dividuals, having more or less organic unity due to the 
differentiation and interdependence of its parts, but lack- 
ing that higher bond of unity which alone can ensure its 
stability and continuity, and which, especially, can alone 
enable it to withstand and survive the peaceful pressure 
or the warlike impact of true nations. 

I am not at present defending nationality ; I shall come 
back to the question of its value. I am now only con- 
cerned with the psychological problem of the nature and 
conditions of the development of national self -conscious- 
ness. I have been using the latter phrase and the phrase 
"the idea of the nation" as a shorthand expression; but I 
must remind the reader that we have to beware of the 
intellectualist error of regarding ideas as moving powers; 
ideas as merely intellectual representations or conceptions 
have no motive power, they are in themselves indifferent. 
It is only in so far as the object conceived becomes the 
object of some sentiment that the conception of it moves us 
strongly to feeling and action. I must refer, therefore, to 
what I have written on the sentiments and the self- 
regarding sentiment.^ Here I would insist on the strict- 
ness in this point of our analogy between the individual 
and the national mind. I have pointed out that the 

^ Social Psychology, Chapters V — IX. Dr.Bosanquet's failure (as it 
seems to me) to achieve a satisfactory accoimt of the social will is the in- 
evitable consequence of the inadequacy of his conception of individual voli- 
tion. This is set out in his Psychology of the Moral Self, where he shows 
himself to be an uncompromising adherent of the intellectualist tradition. 
He totally ignores the existence and organisation of the conative side of the 
mind. His notion of volition is based upon the now discredited theory of 
ideo-motor action. 



The Will of the Nation 225 

individuars idea of himself only develops beyond a rudi- 
mentary stage in virtue of and in so far as this idea be- 
comes the nucleus of a strong self-regarding sentiment 
which gives him an interest in himself, directs his atten- 
tion upon his own personality and its relations, and im.- 
pels him to strive to know himself. So that a developed 
individual self-consciousness never is and never can be a 
purely intellectual growth, but always involves a strong 
sentiment, a centring of emotional conative tendencies 
upon this object, the self. Exactly the same is true 
of nations. 

Hence national self-consciousness can never develop 
except in the form of an idea of strong affective tone, that 
is to say a sentiment. Hence, whenever we speak of 
national self-consciousness or the idea of the nation as a 
powerful factor in its life, the sentiment is implied, and I 
have implied it when using these expressions hitherto. 
This national sentiment, which, if we use the word in its 
widest sense, may be called patriotism, is, like all the other 
group sentiments, developed by way of extension of the 
self-regarding sentiment of the individual to the group, 
and may be further complicated and strengthened by the 
inclusion of other tendencies. A point of especial impor- 
tance is that this great group sentiment can hardly be 
developed otherwise than by way of extension of senti- 
ments for smaller included groups, the family especially. 
For the idea of the nation is too difficult for the grasp of the 
child's mind, and cannot, therefore, become the object of 
a sentiment until the intellectual powers are considerably 
developed. Hence the development of a family sentiment, 
or of one for some other small easily conceived group, is 
essential for the development in the child of those modes 
of mental action which are involved in all group feeling 
and action. For this reason the family is the surest, 
perhaps essential, foundation of national life; and 

IS 



226 National Mind and Character 

national self -consciousness is strongest, where family life 
is strongest. 

The development of the group spirit in general and of 
national self-consciousness in particular is favoured by, 
and indeed dependent upon, conditions similar to those 
which develop the self-consciousness of individuals. Here 
is another striking point of the analogy between the in- 
dividual and the national mind. Passing over other con- 
ditions, let us notice one, the most important of all. The 
individual's consciousness of self is developed chiefly by 
intercourse with other individuals — by imitation, by 
conflict, by compulsion, and by co-operation. Without 
such intercourse it must remain rudimentary. The in- 
dividual's conception of himself is perpetually extended by 
his increasing knowledge of other selves ; and his knowledge 
of those other selves grows in the light of his knowledge of 
himself. There is perpetual reciprocal action. The same 
is true of peoples. A population living shut off, isolated 
from the rest of the world, within which no distinctions of 
tribe and race existed, would never become conscious of 
itself as one people and, therefore, would not become a 
nation. Some such conditions obtained for long ages 
among the pastoral hordes of the central Eurasian Steppes, 
which, so long as they remained there, have never formed a 
nation ; and the same was true of the tribes of Arabia, until 
Mahomet impelled them by his religion of the sword to 
hurl themselves upon neighbouring peoples. 

Of civilised peoples, China has had least intercourse with 
the outer world. The Chinese knew too little of other 
races to imitate them; they did not come into conflict or 
co-operation with others, save in a very partial manner 
at long intervals of time, or only with their Mongol con- 
querors, whom they despised as inferior to them in every- 
thing but warfare, and whom they abhorred. Hence, in 
spite of the homogeneity of the people, of the common 



The Will of the Nation 227 

culture, and of the vast influence of great teachers, na- 
tional consciousness and the group spirit in all its forms 
remained at a low level. Hence, a great deficiency in those 
virtues which have their root in the social consciousness; 
a low standard of public duty, a lack of the sense of obliga- 
tion to society. Hence, the corruptness and hollowness 
of all official transactions and political life. Want of 
honesty in public affairs is not the expression of an inher- 
ent defect of the Chinese character; for in commercial 
relations with Europeans the Chinaman has proved him- 
self extremely trustworthy, much superior indeed in this 
respect to some other peoples. It is probable that, if 
China, like Europe, had long ago been divided into a 
number of nations, each of them, through action and 
reaction upon the rest, would have developed a much 
fuller national consciousness than exists at present and 
some considerable degree of public spirit and would con- 
sequently have advanced very much farther in the scale 
of social evolution, instead of standing still as the whole 
people has done for so long. 

Everywhere we can see the illustrations of this law. Of 
all forms of intercourse, conflict and competition are the 
most effective in developing national consciousness and 
character, because they bring a common purpose to the 
minds of all individuals; and that is the condition of the 
highest degree and effectiveness of collective mental action 
and volition. It is under these conditions that the idea of 
the nation and the will to protect it and to forward its 
interests become predominant in the minds of individuals ; 
and the more so the greater the public danger, the greater 
and the more obvious the need for the postponement of 
private ends to the general end. 

Already there is beginning to develop a European self- 
consciousness and a European purpose, provoked by the 
demonstration of the hitherto latent power of Asia; and,- 



228 National Mind and Character 

if a federation of European peoples is ever to be realised, it 
will be the result of their further development through 
opposition to a great and threatening Asiatic power, a 
revived Moslem empire, or possibly a threatened American 
domination. ^ 

Although war has hitherto been the most important 
condition of the development of national consciousness, it 
is not the only one; and it remains to be seen whether in- 
dustrial or other forms of rivalry can play a similar part. 
Probably, industrial rivalry cannot; the acctmiulation of 
wealth is too largely dependent upon the accidents of 
material conditions to become a legitimate source of na- 
tional satisfaction ; for, unHke the satisfaction arising from 
successful exertion of military power, it does not imply 
intrinsic superiorities. If the natural conditions of ma- 
terial prosperity could be equalised for all nations, then 
the acquisition of superior wealth, implying as it would 
superior capacities, might become a sufficiently satisfying 
end of national action; just as the equalisation of condi- 
tions among individuals in America has for the present 
rendered the accumulation of wealth a sufficient end, 
because such accumulation implies superior powers and is 
the mark of personal superiority. 

Other forms of rivalry — rivalry in art, science, letters, 
in efficiency of social and political organisation, even in 
games and sports, all play some part; and it is possible 
that together they might suffice to constitute sufficient 
stimulus, even though the possibility of war should be for 
ever removed. ^ 

But national self-consciousness is not developed by 
conflict and rivalr}^ only. It is refined and enriched by 
all other forms of intercourse. In studying other peoples, 

* This was written before the war with Germany. 

=» Emulation in the administration of backward peoples offers perhaps the 
greatest possibilities as "a moral equivalent for war." 



The Will of the Nation 229 

their organisation and their history, we become more 
clearly aware of the defects and the qualities and poten- 
tialities of our own nation. And in this way, refinement 
of national consciousness is now going on rapidly in the 
European peoples. The latest considerable advance is due 
to the observation of Japan; for this has clearly demon- 
strated the imperfection of many conceptions that were 
current among us and has brought a certain abatement of 
national complacency and a greater earnestness of national 
self-criticism, which is highly favourable to increase of 
national self-knowledge. ^ 

We might place nations in a scale of nationhood. The 
scale would correspond roughly to one in which they were 
arranged according to the degree to which the public good 
is the end, and the desire of it the motive, of men's actions; 
this in turn would correspond to a scale in which they were 
arranged according to the degree of development and 
diffusion of the national consciousness, of the idea of the 
nation or society as a whole ; and this again to one in which 
they were arranged according to the degree of intercourse 
they have had with other nations. At the bottom of the 
scale would stand the people of Thibet, the most isolated 
people of the world ; near them the Chinese, who also have 
until recently been almost entirely excluded from inter- 
national intercourse. Such peoples have a national con- 
sciousness and sentiment which is extremely vague and 
imperfect. They do not realise their weakness, their 
strength, or their potentialities, but have an unenlightened 
pride without aspiration for a higher form of national life. 
A little above them would stand Russia, which has re- 
mained for so long outside the area of European interna- 
tional life. While at the top of the scale would be those 
nations which have borne their part in all the strain and 
stress and friction of European rivalry and intercourse. 

' Cp. Principal L. P. Jacks on the Japanese in his Alchemy of Thought. 



230 National Mind and Character 

These degrees of international intercourse have been 
very largely determined by geographical conditions; 
isolation, and consequent backwardness in national evolu- 
tion, being in nearly every case due to remoteness of posi- 
tion. The most important factor of modem times making 
for more rapid social evolution is probably the practical 
destruction or overcoming of the barriers between peoples ; 
for thus all peoples are brought into the international 
arena, and their national spirit is developed through 
international intercourse and rivalr}^ 

It is this increasing contact and intercourse of j)eoples, 
brought about by the increased facilities of communica- 
tion, which has quickened the growth of national self- 
consciousness throughout all the world and has made the 
principle of nationality or, more properly, the desire for 
nationhood and for national existence and development, 
for self-assertion and for international recognition, the 
all-important feature of m.odern times, overshadowing 
every other phenomenon that historians have to notice, 
or statesmen to reckon with. 

The American nation is interesting in this connection. 
If we ask — Why is their public life on a relatively low level, 
in spite of so m_any fa^^ouring conditions, including a 
healthy and strong public opinion? — the answer is that 
they have been until recently too much shut off from col- 
lective intercourse with other nations, too far removed 
from the region of conflict and rivalry. And judicious 
well-wishers of the American nation rejoice that it has 
recently entered more fully into the international arena, 
and has not continued to pursue the poHcy of isolation, 
which was long in favour; because, as is already manifest, 
this fuller intercourse and intenser rivalry with other na- 
tions must render fuller and more effective their national 
spirit, develop the national will and raise the national life 
to a higher plane, giving to individuals higher ends and 



The Will of the Nation 231 

motives than the mere accumulation of wealth, and re- 
moving that self-complacency as regards their national 
existence which hitherto has characterised them in com- 
mon with the peoples of Thibet and China. 



CHAPTER XII 
Ideas in National Life 

WE have seen that the idea of the nation can and 
does, in virtue of the formation of the senti- 
ment of devotion to it, lead men to choose and 
decide and act for the sake of the nation; they desire the 
welfare and the good of the nation as a whole, they value 
its material prosperity and its reputation in the eyes of 
other nations ; and, in so far as the decisions and actions of 
a nation proceed from this motive, co-operating with and 
controlling other motives in the minds of its members, 
such decision and action are the expressions of true col- 
lective volition. 

It is truly volition because it conforms to the true type 
of volition. Individual volition can only be marked off 
from every impulsive action and every lower form of effort, 
by the fact that in true volition, among all the impulses or 
motives that may impel a man to action or decision, the 
dominant role is played by a motive that springs from 
his self-regarding sentiment. This motive is a desire to 
achieve a particular end, which, viewed as the achievement 
of the self, brings him satisfaction, because the thought of 
himself achieving this end is in harmony with the ideal of 
the self which he has gradually built up and has learnt to 
desire to realise under the influence of his social setting. 
The same is true of national volition. 

And it is collective volition in so far as the deliberations 
by which the decision of the nation has been reached have 

232 



Ideas in National Life 233 

been effected through those formally and informally 
organised relations and channels of communication and by 
means of all the various modes of interaction of persons by 
which public opinion is formed and in which it is guided 
and controlled by the living traditions of the nation. 

That this is the true nature of national volition may be 
more clearly realised on considering some instances of 
national action which could not properly be called the 
expression of the will of the Nation. A tariff might be 
adopted because a large number of men desired it, each in 
order that he himself might get rich more quickly; and, 
even though a large majority, or even all men, desired it, 
each for his private end, it would not be the expression of 
the national will, it would not be due to collective volition; 
it would be the expression of the will of all. Nor would 
it be an expression of the national will, even if each be- 
lieved that, not only he, but also all his fellows would be 
enriched, and if he desired it for that reason also; that 
would be an expression of the will of all for the good of all. 
Only if and in so far as the decision was reached through 
the influence of those who desired it, because it seemed to 
them to be for the good of the whole nation, would it be 
the expression of the will of the nation. 

And the difference would be not merely a difference of 
motive; the difference might be very important in respect 
both of the deliberative processes by which the decision 
was reached and also in respect of its ultimate conse- 
quences. For the will of all for the good of all would have 
reference only to the immediate future; whereas the truly 
national will would be influenced not only by consideration 
of the good of all existing citizens, but, in an even greater 
degree, by the thought of the continued welfare of the 
whole nation, in the remote future. 

Again, suppose that, on the occasion of an insult or 
injury to the nation (I remind the reader of the incident 



234 National Mind and Character 

in the North Sea when the Russian fleet fired on our fishing 
boats), a wave of anger against the offending nation sweeps 
over the whole country and that this outburst of popular 
fury plunges the nation into war. That would be col- 
lective mental process, but not voHtion ; it would be action 
on the plane of impulse or desire, unregulated by reflection 
upon the end proposed in relation to the welfare of the 
nation and by the motives to action that are stirred by 
such reflection. 

Again, suppose a nation of which every member was 
patriotic, and suppose that some proposed national action 
were pondered upon by each man apart in his own cham- 
ber, without consultation and discussion with his fellows 
in public and private. Then, though the decision would 
be true volition, in so far as it was determined by each 
man's desire for the national welfare, it yet would not be 
collective or national volition; because not reached by 
collective deliberation. 

We have seen that the idea of the nation, present to the 
minds of the mass of its members, is an essential condition 
of the nation's existence in any true sense of the word na- 
tion; that the idea alone as an intellectual apprehension 
cannot exert any large influence ; that it determines judg- 
ment and action only in virtue of the sentiment which 
grows up about this object — a sentiment which is trans- 
mitted and fostered from generation to generation, just 
because it renders the nation an object of value. The 
consideration should be obvious enough; but it has com- 
monly been ignored by philosophers of the intellectualist 
school. They treat the individual mind as a system of 
ideas ; they ignore the fact that it has a conative side which , 
has its own organisation, partially distinct from, though |j 
not independent of, the intellectual side ; and consequently 
they ignore equally the fact that the national mind has its 
conative organisation. 



Ideas in National Life 235 

Imagine a people in whom anti-nationalism (in the form 
of cosmopolitanism, syndicalism, or philosophic anarchism) 
had spread, until this attitude towards the nation-state 
as such had become adopted by half its members, while the 
other half remained patriotic. Then there would be acute 
conflict and discussion, and the idea of the nation would 
be vividly present to all minds; but the nature of the 
sentiment attached to it would be different and opposite 
in the two halves ; one of attachment and devotion in the 
one half; of dislike, aversion, or at least indifference (i.e. 
lack of sentiment) in the other half. And the efforts of 
the one half to maintain the nation as a unit would be 
antagonised and perhaps rendered nugatory by the in- 
difference or opposition of the other half, who would 
always seek to break down national boundaries and 
would refuse co-operation in any national action, and who 
would league themselves with bodies of similar inter- 
ests and anti-national tendencies in other countries. 
Then, even though all might be well-meaning people 
desiring the good of mankind, the nation would be very 
greatly weakened and probably would soon cease to exist 
as such. 

The illustration shows the importance of the distinction 
which Rousseau did not draw in his discussion of the 
general will — namely, the distinction between the good of 
all and the good of the whole, i.e. of the nation as such. 
It might be argued that the distinction is purely verbal; 
it might be said that, if you secure the good of all, you 
thereby ipso facto secure the good of the whole, because the 
whole consists of the sum of existing individuals; and that 
this is obvious, because, if you take them away, no whole 
remains. But to argue thus is to ignore the fact on which 
we have already insisted — namely, that the whole is 
much more than the sum of the existing units, because it 
has an indefinitely long future before it and a part to play, 



236 National Mind and Character 

through indefinitely long periods of time, as a factor in the 
general welfare and progress of mankind. 

So much greater is the whole than the sum of its existing 
parts, that it might well seem right to sacrifice the welfare 
and happiness of one or two or more generations, and even 
the lives of the majority of the citizens, if that were neces- 
sary to the preservation and future welfare of the whole 
nation as such. This is no merely theoretical distinction, 
it is one of the highest practical importance, which we may 
illustrate in two ways. 

A whole nation may be confronted with the alternative, 
may be forced to choose between the good of all and the 
good of the whole. Such a choice was, it may be said 
without exaggeration, suddenly presented to the Belgian 
people, and only less acutely to ourselves and to Italy, by 
the recent European conflagration; and in each case the 
good of the whole has been preferred. Is it not probable 
and obvious that, if each or all of these peoples had con- 
sented to the domination of Germany, the material wel- 
fare of all their existing citizens might well have been 
increased, rather than diminished, and that their choice 
has involved not only the loss of life of large numbers of 
their citizens and great sufferings for nearly all the others, 
but also enormous sacrifice of material prosperity, in order 
that the whole may survive and eventually prosper as a 
nation working out its national destiny free from external | 
domination ? There are, or were, those who say that they 
would just as soon live under German rule, because they , 
would be governed at least as well and perhaps better than I 
by their own government hitherto ; and there is perhaps » 
nothing intrinsically bad or wrong in this attitude; the 
question of its rightness or wrongness turns wholly on the 
valuation of nationality. It is easier to appreciate this 
plea on behalf of another people than our own. One may 
hear it said even now that, after all, it would have been 



Ideas in National Life 237 

better for Belgium that she should have entered into the 
group of Germanic powers in some sort of federal system 
or Customs union; that, in general, it is ridiculous that the 
small states should claim sovereign powers and pretend to 
have their own foreign policy and so forth ; that they are 
struggling against the inevitable, against a universal and 
necessary tendency for the absorption of the smaller states 
by the larger. 

We may illustrate the difference between regard for the 
good of all members of the nation and of the nation itself 
in another way — namely, by reference to socialism, the 
principle which would abolish inequalities of wealth and 
opportunity, as far as possible, by abolishing or greatly 
restricting the rights of private property and capital, 
especially the right of inheritance. There can, I think, 
be little doubt that the adoption of socialism in this sense 
by almost any modern nation would increase the well-being 
and happiness of its members very decidedly on the whole 
for the present generation and possibly for some genera- 
tions to come. It is in respect of the continued welfare of 
the whole and of its perpetuation as an evolving and pro- 
gressing organism that the effects seem likely to be 
decidedly bad. The socialists are in the main those who 
fix their desire and attention on the good of all; hence they 
are for the most part inclined to set a low value on nation- 
ality, even while they demand a vast extension of the 
functions of the State, conceived as an organised system of 
administration. Those, on the other hand, who repudiate 
socialism, not merely because they belong to the class of 
"Haves," must seek their justification in the consideration 
of the probable effects of such a change on the welfare of 
the nation conceived as an organism whose value far 
transcends the lives of the present generation. 

When, then, we attribute to the idea of the nation or 
to the national consciousness this all-important creative. 



238 National Mind and Character 

constitutive, and conservative function, we must be clear 
that the idea is not an intellectual conception merely, but 
implies an enduring emotional conative attitude which is 
the sentiment of devotion to the nation; and, further, we 
must remember that the nation means not simply all 
existing individuals, the mere momentary embodiment of 
the nation, but something that is far greater, because it 
includes all the potentialities embodied in the existing 
persons and organisation. 

It is the presence and operation in the national mind of 
the idea of the nation in the extended sense just indicated 
that gives to national decisions and actions the character 
of truly collective volitions ; they approach this type more 
nearly, the more the idea is rich in meaning and adequate or 
true, and the more widely it is spread, and the more power- 
ful and widely spread is the sentiment which attaches 
value to the nation and sways men to decision and action 
for the sake of the whole, determining the issue among all 
other conflicting motives. 

And it is the working of the national spirit and the 
acceptance of and devotion to the national organisation 
which render the submission of the minority to the means 
chosen by the majority a voluntar}^ submission ; for it is of 
the essence of that organisation that, while all accept and 
will the same most general end, namely the welfare of the 
whole, the choice of means must be determined by the 
judgment of the majority, formed and expressed as a 
collective judgment and opinion by way of all the many 
channels of reciprocal influence that the national organisa- ■ 
tion, both formal and informal, provides. In so far as 
each man holds this attitude esteeming the nation and 
accepting loyally its constitution or organisation, the 
decision determined by even a bare majority vote of 
parliament becomes the expression of the national will; , 
and the co-operation in carrying it out of those who did 






Ideas in National Life 239 

not judge the method to be wise, and who therefore voted 
against it, yet becomes a truly voluntary co-operation, in 
so far as they accept the established organisation. 

The point may be illustrated by the instance of a nation 
going to war. A large minority may be against war, for 
reasons which to them may seem to be of the highest kind ; 
it may be that they judge the nation to be morally in the 
wrong in the matter in dispute, or very questionably in 
the right, as many Englishmen did during the Boer War; 
and yet, if, by the accepted organised channels of national 
deliberation and decision, war has been declared, then, 
although it was their duty to do what they could to make 
their opinion prevail before the decision was reached, there 
is no moral inconsistency in their supporting the war 
measures with all their strength. It is in fact implied in 
their loyalty, if they are loyal and patriotic, that they 
shall yield their individual opinion to the expression of the 
national will and shall accept the means chosen to the 
common end. That is the truth implied in the phrase — 
My country right or wrong. Of course, this phrase may 
be taken in a reprehensible sense, as meaning that any 
opportunity of forwarding the immediate interests of one's 
country must be taken, regardless of the interests of other 
communities and of the obligations of common honesty 
and hiunanity upon which all human welfare depends. 

In the same way, a man might disapprove of a partic lar 
tax, say on liquor, or of obligatory military service; and 
yet he may accept the national will and serve faithfully as 
a soldier, without inconsistency, and without ceasing to 
be a free agent truly wilHng the acts imposed by his posi- 
tion in the whole organisation; just as during the late war 
many priests served as soldiers in the French army. Or, 
to take an extreme instance, a man who has broken the 
law and even incurred the death penalty may be truly said 
to undergo his punishment of imprisonment or death as 



240 National Mind and Character 



1 



a morally free agent, if he is loyal to his country and its 
institutions, accepting the penalty, while yet believing his 
action to be right. Such perfect loyalty to the nation is 
of course rare; and in all actual nations men have pro- 
gressed towards it in very different degrees. Most exist- 
ing nations have emerged from preceding despotisms by 
the repeated widening of the sphere of freedom, as the 
growth of loyalty in strength and extension rendered such 
freedom consistent with the survival of the State and its 
administrative functions. 

Thus a people progresses from the status of an organism, 
in which the parts are subordinated to the whole without 
choice or free volition on their part, or even against their 
wills, towards the ideal of a Nation-State, an organic whole 
which is founded wholly upon voluntary contract between 
each member and the whole, and in which the distinction 
between the State and the nation becomes gradually over- 
come and replaced by identity. For, as national self- 
consciousness develops and each man conceives more fully 
and clearly the whole nation and his place and function in 
it, and grows in loyalty to the nation, he ceases to obey 
the laws merely because he is constrained by the authority 
and force of the State. An increasing proportion of 
citizens obey the law and render due services voluntarily, 
because they perceive that, in so doing, they are con- 
tributing towards the good of the whole which they value 
highly; in so far as they act in this spirit, the actions and 
restraints prescribed by law become their voluntary 
actions and restraints. 

Thus the theory that society is founded upon a Social 
Contract, which, if taken as a description of the historical 
process of genesis, is false, is true, if accepted as the 
constitutive principle of the ideal State towards which 
progressive nations are tending. 

And, as the organisation of a nation becomes less de- 



Ideas in National Life 241 

pendent upon outer authority and upon mere custom and 
the unreasoning acceptance of tradition, and more and 
more upon free consent and voluntary contract, the nation 
does not cease to be an organism ; it retains that formal 
and informal organisation which has developed in large 
part without the deliberate guidance of the collective will 
and which is essential to its collective life; the national 
mind, as it grows in force and extension and understanding 
of its own organisation, accepts those features which it 
finds good, and gradually modifies those which appear less 
good in the light of its increasing self-knowledge; and so it 
tends more and more to become a contractual organism, 
which, as Fouillee has insisted, is the highest type of society. 
It should be noticed that this ideal of the contractual 
organism synthesises the two great doctrines or theories of 
society which have generally been regarded as irrefconcil- 
able alternatives: the doctrine of society as an organism, 
and that of society as founded upon reason and free will. 
They have been treated as opposed and irreconcilable 
doctrines, because those who regarded society as an organ- 
ism, taking the standpoint of natural science, have laid 
stress upon its evolution by biological accidents and by 
the interaction and conflict of many blind impulses and 
purely individual volitions, in which collective volition, 
governed by an ideal of the form to be achieved, had no 
part. While, on the other hand, the idealist«philosophers, 
describing society or the nation as wholly the work of 
reason and free will, have been guilty of the intellectualist 
fallacy of regarding man as a purely rational being ; they 
have ignored the fact that all men, even the most intel- 
lectual, are largely swayed and moulded by processes of 
suggestion, imitation, sympathy, and instinctive impulse, 
in quite non-rational ways; and they have ignored still 
more completely the fact that the operation of these non- 
rational processes continues to be not only of immense 

z6 



242 National Mind and Character 



te-| 



influence but also inevitable and necessary to the mainte 
nance of that organic unity of society upon which as a basis 
the contract-unity is superimposed as a bond of a higher, 
more rational, and more spiritual quality. 

The former doctrine logically tends to the paralysis of 
social effort and to the adoption of extreme individualism, 
to the doctrine of each man for himself, and of laissezfaire, 
doctrines such as those of Herbert Spencer. The other, 
the idealist theory of the State as being founded and formed 
by reason, tends equally logically towards extreme State 
socialism ; because its overweening belief in reason leads it 
to ignore the large and necessary basis of subrational 
organisation and operation. 

Only a s^mthesis of the two in the doctrine of the con- 
tractual organism can reconcile them and give us the ideal 
of a nation in which the maximum and perfection of or- 
ganisation shall be combined with the maximimi of liberty, 
because in it each individual will be aware of the whole and 
his place and functions in it, and will voluntarily accept 
that place and perform those functions. 

The highest, most perfectly organised and effective na- 
tion is, then, not that in which the individuals are disposed 
of, their actions completely controlled, and their wills 
suppressed by the power of the State. It is, rather, one ' 
in which the self-consciousness and initiative and volition 
of individuals, personality in short, is developed to the | 
highest degree, and in which the minds and wills of the 
members work harmoniously together under the guidance 
and pressure of the idea of the nation, rendered in the 
highest degree explicit and full and accurate. 



The Value of Nationality 



I 



At the present time, while the mass of men continue to 
accept the duty of patriotism unquestioningly, and his- 



Ideas in National Life 243 

torians for the most part are content to describe with some 
astonishment the immense development of nationaHsm in 
the past century, many voices are loudly raised for and 
against nationality. The great mass of men no doubt are 
swept away in the flood of patriotic feeling. But the war 
has also intensified the antipathy, and given increased 
force to the arguments, of those who decry nationality and 
deprecate patriotism — for these are but two different 
modes of expressing the same attitude. 

There are two principal classes of the anti-nationalists. 
First, the philosophic anarchists, who would abolish all 
states and governments, as unnecessary evils, men like 
Kropotkin and Tolstoi. Secondly, the cosmopolitans, 
who, while believing in the necessity of government and 
even demanding more centralised administration, would 
yet abolish all national boundaries as far as possible, 
boundaries of geography, of language, race, and sentiment, 
and all national govemments, and would aim at the estab- 
lishment of one great world state. 

Though the aims of these two parties are so widely 
different, they use much the same arguments against 
nationalism. According to the anti-nationalist view, 
nationalism and the patriotism in which it is founded are 
a kind of disease of human nature, which, owing to the 
unfortunate fact that mankind has retained the gregarious 
instinct of his animal ancestors, inevitably breaks out as 
soon as any community begins to come into free contact 
and rivalry with other communities, and which tends to 
grow in force in a purely instinctive and irrational manner 
the more these contacts and rivalries increase. 

The liability to patriotism is thus regarded as closely 
comparable with mankind's unfortunate liability to 
drunkenness, to feel the fascination of strong Hquor — as 
merely a natural and inevitable result or by-product of an 
unfortunate flaw in human nature — a tendency which will 



244 National Mind and Character 

have to be sternly repressed and, if possible, eradicated, 
before men can hope to live in peace and tolerable security 
and to develop their higher capacities. 

The fact that patriotism of some degree and form is 
universally displayed, and that it breaks out everywhere 
into heat and flame when certain conditions are realised, 
does not for them in any degree justify it ; and it should 
not, they hold, reconcile us to its continued existence; they 
draw an indictment not merely against a whole people, 
but against the whole human race. They attack national- 
ism, firstly, by describing what in their opinion patriotism 
is and whence it comes ; secondly, by describing what they 
believe to be the natural consequences and effects of 
nationalism. 

The most common mode of attack is to identify patriot- 
ism with jingoism; they speak of "jelly-bellied flag- 
fiappers" of flag-wagging and mafficking; they assert that 
the essence of patriotism is hatred and all uncharitableness 
towards other countries and their citizens. ^ 

Less virulent is the criticism of those who, looking 
coldly upon patriotism, describe it as the mere bHnd ex- 
pression of the working of the gregarious instinct among 
us, and as something therefore quite irrational, which must 
and will tend to disappear, as men become more enlight- 
ened and are guided more by reason and less by instinct. ^ 

Again, it is said that patriotism is a form of selfishness 
and therefore bad ; that it is a Hmitation of our sympathies, 
a principle of injustice; that it stands in the way of the 
realisation of universal justice, of the universal brother- 
hood of man, which is the ideal we obviously must accept 

^ W. L. George, English Review, May, 1915, "The Price of Nationality." 
"Anger, indeed, is the soul of what is called the national will. To call it a 
will is perhaps too much, it is an instinct and mainly an instinct to hate. 
. . . Love of country is mainly hatred of other coimtries." 

» Cf. Gilbert Murray, Collection of Addresses on The War given at Bedford 
College, 1915. 



Ideas in National Life 245 

and aim at. Or in other words, and this is the main 
indictment, it is alleged that patriotism and nationalism 
inevitably tend to produce war, that they keep the rival 
nations perpetually arming for possible wars and actually 
in commercial and economic war, if not at real war. And 
of course the evils of warfare and of such perpetual pre- 
paration for war are great and obvious enough in modern 
Europe. In support of this indictment, they point to the 
golden age of the Roman Empire, when the inhabitants of 
all its parts were content to sink their differences of race 
and country and were proud to proclaim themselves citizens 
of the Roman Empire ; and they say that in consequence 
the civilised world attained then a pitch of prosperity 
and contentment never known before or since over any 
large area of the earth. 

This is a formidable indictment, to which the exponents 
and advocates of patriotism have for the most part been 
content to reply by renewed exhortations to patriotism, 
by emotional appeals, by rhetoric, by the quotation of 
patriotic verses, the citation of the glorious deeds of our 
armies and soldiers now and in past times, by all the arts 
of persuasion and suggestion. As a fine example of this 
method one may cite Mr. Stratford Wingfield's History of 
British Patriotism, in which he not only confines himself to 
these methods, but shows a positive dislike and contempt 
for all attempts to apply reason and scientific method to 
the study of human affairs. ' In maintaining this attitude, 
the advocates of patriotism give some colour to the claim 

^ Incidentally he holds up my Social Psychology as a dreadful example of 
such an attempt and a woeful evidence of the parlous state of present-day 
culture in England. Such dislike of any attempt to understand that which 
we hold sacred is intelligible enough in the vulgar, for whom all analysis is 
destructive of the values they unreasoningly cherish. But it may be hoped 
that men of letters who set out to defend patriotism will learn to rise above 
this attitude, just as the more enlightened leaders of religion are learning to 
welcome psychological inquiry in their domain. 



246 National Mind emd Character 

of their opponents that patriotism or nationahsm is 
essentially irrational, in the sense that it is incapable of 
justification by reason. 

The politicians and historians, on the other hand, who 
are so generally demanding that the European settlement 
after the war must accept nationality as its fundamental 
principle, are commonly content to note the strength and 
the wide distribution of the patriotic sentiment, without 
enquiring into its origin, nature, or value. 

Let us examine the arguments against patriotism and 
then see what reason can advance in its defence. For, 
though a rational defence of patriotism will have little 
direct effect in making patriots, we may be sure that, if 
such defence cannot be maintained, patriotism will have 
to fight a losing battle. 

In disparaging patriotism by describing it as the work 
of an instinct, the gregarious or the pugnacious or other 
instinct, or of several instincts, its critics are guilty of two 
psychological errors and a popular fallacy. The last is 
the fallacy that the worth of any thing is to be judged by 
the course from which it springs. Even if patriotism were 
nothing more than the direct expression of the gregarious 
instinct which we possess in common with many of the 
higher animals, that would not in itself condemn it. But 
this description of it, as a product of instinct as opposed to 
the principles we attain by reason, involves that false dis- 
junction and opposition of reason to instinct which is 
traditional and which the intellectualist philosophers 
commonly adopt, when they condescend to recognise in 
any way the presence of instinctive tendencies in human 
nature. 

The other psychological error is the failure to recognise 
that patriotism although, like all other great mental 
forces, it is rooted in instinct, is not itself an instinct or the 
direct expression of any instinct or group of instincts, but 



Ideas in National Life 247 

is rather an extremely complicated sentiment, which has a 
long and complex history in each individual mind in which 
it manifests itself; that it is, therefore, capable of infinite 
variety and of an indefinite degree of intellectualisation 
and refinement ; that the cult of patriotism is, therefore, a 
field for educational effort of the highest order, and that in 
this field moral and intellectual education may achieve 
their noblest and most far-reaching effects. 

The psychological justification of patriotism has already 
been indicated, but may be concisely stated here. The 
moral value of the group spirit was considered in an earlier 
chapter; we saw how it, and it alone, raises the conduct of 
the mass of men above the plane of simple egoism or family 
selfishness. The sentiment of devotion or loyalty to any 
group has this virtue in some degree; but loyalty to the 
nation is capable of exalting character and conduct in a 
higher degree than any other form of the group spirit. 
For the nation alone has continuity of existence in the 
highest degree ; a long past which gives a large perspective 
of past history, involving the history of long series of 
self-sacrificing efforts and many heroic actions; and the 
prospect of an indefinitely prolonged future, with the 
possibility of continued progress and development of every 
kind, and therefore some security for the perpetuation of 
the results achieved by individual efforts. ' 

Further, the nation alone, is a self-contained and com- 
plete organism ; other groups within it do but minister to 
the life of the whole ; their value is relative to that of the 
whole ; the continuance of results achieved on their behalf 
is dependent upon the continued welfare of the whole (for 
example, the welfare of any class or profession — a fact too 
easily overlooked by those in whom class spirit grows 
strong). Hence, the nation, as an object of sentiment, 

' In these respects the Church alone can enter into serious rivalry as an 
object of loyalty. 



248 National Mind eind Character 

includes all smaller groups within it ; and, when the nation 
is regarded from an enlightened point of view, the senti- 
ment for it naturally comes to include in one great sys- 
tem all minor group sentiments and to be strengthened by 
their incorporation. 

It is important to notice also that, just as the minor 
group sentiments are not incompatible with, but rather 
may strengthen, the national sentiment, when subordin- 
ated to and incorporated in it, so the national sentiment 
is not incompatible with still more widely inclusive group 
sentiments — for example, that for a European system of 
nations, for the ''League of Nations'* or for Western 
Civilisation in general. And, while loyalty to humanity 
as a whole is a noble ideal, it is one which can only be 
realised through a further step of that process of extension 
of the object of the group sentiment, of which extension 
patriotism itself is the culmination at present for the great 
mass of civiHsed mankind. The attempt to achieve it 
by any other road is bound to fail because psychologically 
unsound. ^ 

Let us note in passing that neglect of this truth gives 
rise to two of the extreme forms of political doctrine or 
ideal, current at the present day; first, the ideal of the 
brotherhood of man in a nationless world; secondly, the 
extreme form of democratic individualism which assum.es 
that the good of society is best promoted by the freest 
possible pursuit by individuals of their private ends, which 
believes that each man must have an equal voice in the 
government of his country, because that is the only way 
in which his interests and those of his class can be pro- 
tected and forwarded ; a doctrine which regards public life 
as a mere strife of private and class interests. Both 
ideals fly in the face of psychological facts; and, though 

^ As Dean Inge has remarked — "If they love not those whom they have 
seen, how shall they love those whom they have not seen? " 



Ideas in National Life 249 

they are in appearance extreme opposites, they are apt to 
be found associated in the same minds. 

At the other end of the scale, we have the philosophical 
conservatism of such a thinker as Edmund Burke, which 
is keenly aware of the organic unity of society and looks 
constantly to the good of the whole, deriving from that 
consideration its leading motives and principles, and which 
trusts principally to the growth of the group spirit for the 
holding of the balance between conflicting interests and for 
the promotion of the public welfare. 

Having seen the importance for national life of the idea 
of the nation, the diffusion of which through the minds of 
the people constitutes national self-consciousness, let us 
glance for a moment at the way other ideas may play 
leading rdles in national life. Such are ideas which be- 
came national ideals, that is to say, ideas of some end to 
be reaHsed by the nation which became widely entertained 
and the objects of strong sentiments and of collective 
emotion and desire and which, therefore, determine 
collective action. 

I shall not attempt to deal separately with various 
classes of such ideas, or ideals — the political, the religious, 
the economic; but shall only note the fact that they have 
played and may yet play great parts in the history of the 
world. 

Men are not swayed exclusively by considerations of 
material self-interest, as the older school of economists 
generally assumed; nor even by spiritual self-interest, as 
too much of the religious teaching of the past has assumed ; 
nor even by consideration of the welfare of the social 
groups of which they are members. Many of the great 
events of history have been determined by ideas that have 
had no relation to individual welfare, but have inspired a 
collective enthusiasm for collective action, for national 
^ort, of a distinterested kind; and the lives of some na- 



250 National Mind eind Character 

tions have been dominated by some one or two such ideas. 
These ideas are first conceived and taught by some great 
man, or by a few men who have acquired prestige and 
influence; they then become generally accepted by sugges- 
tion and imitation, accepted more or less uncritically and 
established beyond the reach of argument and reasoning. 

No matter what the character of the idea, its collective 
acceptance by a people enhances for the time the homo- 
geneity of mind among them, renders the people more 
intimately a unity, and serves also to mark it off more 
sharply from other peoples among whom other ideas 
prevail. 

But, besides thus binding together at any period of its 
history the people that entertains it, the generally ac- 
cepted idea, if it endures, may produce further effects by 
becoming incorporated in the national organisation; in so 
far as it determines the form of activity of the people, it 
moulds their institutions and customs into harmony with 
itself, until they become in some measure its embodiment 
and expression; and in any vigorous nation there are 
usually one or two dominant ideas at work in this way. 

It is a favourite dogma with some writers (for example 
M. le Bon) that ideas, before they can exert great effects 
in the Hfe of a nation, must first become unconscious ideas, 
incorporated as they say in the unconscious soul of a 
people. This is an obscure confused doctrine, which, if 
it is meant to be taken literally, we can only reject. If it 
is to have any real meaning, it must be taken in the sense 
that the long prevalence of the ideal moulds the institu- 
tions and customs and the executive organisation of a 
people, so that national action towards the ideal end 
becomes more or less automatic or routine. 

If the ideal so accepted and incorporated in the organ- 
ised structure of the national mind, is one that makes for 
strength and at the same time permits of progress, it lives 



Ideas in National Life 251 

on; in other cases it may destroy the nation, or petrify it, 
arresting all progress. 

Consider one or two examples of ideas that have played 
dominant roles in the lives of nations. They are mostly 
political, or religious, or, most powerful of all, politico- 
religious. The idea of world-conquest has dominated and 
has destroyed several great nations, of which the latest 
example is the German Empire. The idea of conversion 
by the sword, accepted with enthusiasm by the Arab 
nation, gave it for a time tremendous energy, but con- 
tained no potency of permanent power or of progress. 
The idea of immortality, or desire of continued existence 
after death, seems to have dominated the minds of the 
ancient Egyptian people; the idea of escape from the 
evils of this world, those who have fully accepted Bud- 
dhism, like the Burmans. ^ The idea of caste as an eternal 
and impassable barrier has largely determined the history 
of India. 

All these are ideas which have proved ineffective to sus- 
tain national vigour or to promote social evolution. It 
would not be strictly true to say that the fall, or the un- 
progressive condition, of the peoples that have entertained 
these ideas is the result of those ideas; because the general 
acceptance of them proves that they were in harmiony 
with the type of mind of the people. Yet the formulation 
of the ideas by the leading minds who impressed them on 
the peoples must have accentuated those tendencies with 
which they harmonised; and in each case, if the idea had 
never been formulated, or if others had been effectively 
impressed on the mind of the people, the course of its 
history would have been changed. 

Of ideas less adverse to national life take the idea of 
ancestor worship, and the idea of personal loyalty to the 
ruler, ideas which commonly go together and have played 

^ Cp. Fielding Hall, The Soul of a People. 



252 National Mind and Character 

an immense part in the life of some peoples, notably in 
Japan; they have served as effective national bonds in 
periods of transition through which despotically ruled 
populations have progressed to true nationhood. The 
idea of the divine right of kings played for a time a similar 
role in Europe. 

A good example of the operation of an ideal in a modern 
nation is that of the ideal of a great colonial empire in the 
French nation. No doubt, hopes of economic advantages 
may have played some part in this case; but the growth of 
the immense oversea empire of modern France, as well as 
of the great extra-European conquests which France has 
made in the past but has ceased to control, seems to have 
been due in the main to the operation of this ideal in the 
national mind. France has no surplus population, and no 
Frenchman desires to leave his beautiful France ; everyone 
regards himself as cruelly exiled if compelled to live for a 
time in any of the oversea possessions ; and most of these, 
notably the Indo-Chinese Empire, are very expensive, 
costing the nation far more in administrative expenses 
than any profits derived from them, and involving con- 
stant risks of international complications and war, as in 
Morocco in recent years. Nevertheless, the ideal still 
holds sway and, under its driving power, the oversea terri- 
tories of France, especially in Africa, have grown enorm- 
ously. And this ideal has inevitably incorporated itself 
in the organisation of the nation, in a colonial office and 
a foreign legion, and all the administrative machinery 
necessarily set up for securing the ends prescribed by the 
ideal. 

In modern times the most striking illustration of the 
power of ideas on national life is afforded by the influence 
of the ideals of liberty and equality. It was the effective 
teaching of these ideals of liberty and equality, primarily 
by Rousseau, to a people prepared by circimistances to 



Ideas in National Life 253 

receive them, which produced the French Revolution ; and 
all through the nineteenth century they have continued 
to determine great changes of political and social organisa- 
tion in many countries of Europe and in America. 

In England the idea of liberty has long been current and 
long ago had become incorporated and expressed in the 
national organisation; but its application received a vast 
extension when in 1834 England insisted on the liberation 
of all British-owned slaves and paid twenty million sterling 
in compensation. That the idea still lives on among us, 
with this extended application, seems to have been proved 
by the results of recent elections which were influenced 
largely by the force of the no-slavery cry in relation to 
coloured labour. It is an excellent example of an estab- 
lished collective ideal against which reason is of no avail. 

The ideal of liberty never entered the minds of the most 
advanced peoples of antiquity; their most enlightened 
political thinkers could not imagine a State which was not 
founded upon slavery. Yet it has become collectively 
accepted by all the leading nations, and the ordinary man 
has so entirely accepted it that he cannot be brought to 
reason about it. Facts and arguments tending to show 
that the greater part of the population of the world might 
be happier without liberty and under some form of slavery 
cannot touch or enter his mind at all. 

The ideal of political equality is of still later growth, and 
is in a sense derivative from that of liberty ; it was in the 
main accepted as a means to liberty, but has become an 
end in itself. It is moulding national organisation every- 
where; through its influence parliamentary government 
and universal suffrage are becoming the almost universal 
rule, and, through leading to their adoption, this ideal is 
in a fair way to wreck certain of the less firmly organised 
nations, and possibly our own also. 

But the ideal which, beyond all others, characterises the 



254 National Mind and Character 

present age of almost all the nations of the world is the 
ideal of progress. Hardly anyone has any clear notion of 
what he means by progress, or could explicate the idea; 
but the sentiment is very strong, though the idea is very 
vague. This idea also was unknown to the leading think- 
ers of antiquity and is of recent growth ; yet it is so almost 
universally accepted, and it so permeates the mental at- 
mosphere in every direction, that it is hard for us to reaHse 
how new a thing in the history of the world is the exist- 
ence, and still more the effective dominance, of the idea. 
It is perhaps in America that its rule is most absolute ; there 
the severest condemnation that can be passed by the 
average man upon any people or institution is to say that 
it is fifty years behind the time. The popular enthusiasm 
for flying-machines, which threatens to make life almost 
unlivable, is one of the striking illustrations of the force 
of this ideal. 

More recent still, and perhaps equally important, is the 
idea of the solidarity of the human race and of the responsi- 
bility of each nation towards the rest, especially towards 
the weaker and more backward peoples. We no longer 
cheerfully and openly exterminate an inferior people; and, 
when we do so, it is with some expressions of regret and 
even of indignation. 

But this moral idea is still in process of finding accept- 
ance and illustrates well that process. It has been taught 
by a few superior minds and none dares openly repudiate 
it; hence, it gains ground and is now commonly accepted, 
verbally at least, and is just beginning to affect national 
action. 

The four ideas, liberty, equality, progress, and human 
solidarity or universal responsibility, seem to be the lead- 
ing ideas of the present era, the ideas which, in conjunc- 
tion with national sentiments, are more than any other, 
fashioning the future of the world. 



Ideals in National Life 255 

The last two illustrate exceptionally well the capacity of 
nations to be moved by abstract ideas not directly related 
to the welfare of the individuals whose actions they deter- 
mine ; they show once more how false is the doctrine that 
national life is but the conflict of individual wills striving 
after individual good. They show that, through this life 
in and mental interaction with organised society, man is 
raised morally and intellectually high above the level he 
could individually achieve. 



CHAPTER XIII 
Nations of the Higher Type 

LET us consider now the type of nation which from our 
present point of view is the most interesting, the 
type which approximates most nearly to a solution 
of the problem of civilisation, to the reconciliation of 
individuality with collectivity, to the synthesis of in- 
dividualist and coUectivist ideals ; that in which the rights 
and wills of individuals are not forcibly subordinated to 
those of the State by the power of a governing class, and 
in which the deliberative side of the national mind is well 
developed and effective. 

Such are in a certain degree the French, but still more 
the British and the American nations. In the two latter 
countries the rights of the individual are made supreme 
over all other considerations, the welfare of the whole is 
only to be advanced by measures which do not override 
individual wills and rights; or, at least, the only power 
which is admitted to have the right in any degree to over- 
ride individual wills is the will of the majority. In such 
a nation the greatest efforts are concentrated on the per- 
fection of the deliberative organisation, by means of which 
the general mind may arrive at collective judgment and 
choice of means and may express its will. A vast amount 
of time and energy is devoted to this deliberative work; 
while the executive organisation, by which its decisions 
have to be carried into effect, is apt to be comparatively 
neglected and hence imperfect. 

256 






Nations of the Higher Type 257 

These two complementary features of such States we 
see well exemplified here and in America;' where the 
amount of time, money, and effort spent upon the deHbera- 
tive processes and the elaboration of the organisation 
through which they are effected is enormously greater than 
in other nations. And, in spite of the energy expended 
on deliberative processes and on the elaboration of their 
organisation, the interests of the nation as a whole are not 
at present forwarded in a manner at all comparable with 
those of such a State as Germany. Nevertheless, such 
national actions as we do achieve are far more truly the 
expression of the national will; and, if the national mind 
is to be developed to a high level, this vast expenditure of 
energy, which to some impatient spirits seems wasteful 
and useless, must go on. 

As was said in a former chapter, such collective delibera- 
tion of modern nations is only rendered possible by the 
great facilities of communication we enjoy; telegraph, post, 
and railway, and especially the press. The ancients saw, 
truly enough that, with their limited means of communica- 
tion, the higher form of State-organisation must be re- 
stricted to a small population of some thousands only — 
the City-State. 

It is important to note that not only do modern facilities 
of communication render possible a truly collective mental 
life for the large Nation-States of the present age; but that 
these modern conditions actually carry with them certain 
great advantages, which tend to raise the collective mental 
life of modern nations to a higher level than was possible 
for the ancient City-State, even though its members were 
of high average capacity and many of them of very great 
mental power, as in Athens. 

^ This, as President Lowell clearly shows in his Public Opinion and Popu- 
lar Government, is carried to an extreme in America, and lies at the root of 
many administrative evils. 

17 



258 National Mind and Character 

The assembly of citizens in one place for national de- 
liberation rendered them much more susceptible to those 
less desirable peculiarities of collective mental life which 
characterise simple crowds; particularly, the excess of 
emotional excitement, increased suggestibiHty, and, hence, 
the ease with which the whole mass could be sw^ayed 
unduly by the skilful orator. In the modem nation, on 
the other hand, the transmission of news by the press 
secures a certain delay, and a lack of synchronism, in its 
reception by different groups and individuals; and it 
secures also a certain delay in the action and reaction of 
mind on mind, which gives opportunity for individual 
deHberation. Also the sympathetic action of the mass 
mind on the individual mind is in large part indirect, 
rather than direct, representative rather than perceptual, 
and therefore less overwhelming in its effects. These 
conditions greatly temper the violence of the emotional 
reactions and permit of a diversity of feeHng and opinion ; 
an opposed minority has time to form itself and to express 
an opinion, and so may temper the hasty and emotional 
reaction of the majority in a way that is impossible in a 
general assembly. 

A further advantage of the large size of nations may 
arise from the fact that actual decision as to choice of 
means for effecting national action has to be achieved by 
means of representatives who come together in one place. 
Representative government is not merely an inferior 
substitute for government by general assembly; it is 
superior in many respects. If each representative were a 
mere delegate, an average specimen of the group he repre- 
sents, chosen by lot and merely charged to express their ^ 
will, this feature would modify the crude collective mental j 
processes in one important respect only; namely, it would 
counteract to some extent that weakening of individual 
responsibility which is characteristic of collective mental 



Nations of the Higher Type 259 

action. But, in addition to this, internal organisation, in 
the form of tradition and custom, comes in to modify very 
greatly the collective process. 

We see such modifying influence very clearly in the 
election of the English House of Commons and in the 
methods of its operations. Owing partly to a natural 
tendency, partly to a fortunate tradition, the people do 
not elect just any one of themselves to serve as a delegate 
or average sample of the mass; but as a rule they choose, 
or try to choose, some man who displays special capacity 
and special qualifications for taking part in the national 
deliberations. In so far as they are successful in this, 
their representatives are able men and men to whose 
minds the social consciousness, the consciousness of the 
whole people, of its needs and tendencies and aspirations, 
is more fully and clearly present than to the average mind. 
They are also in the main men of more than average public 
spirit. Hence it is not unknown that a purely working 
class constituency, being offered liberal, conservative, and 
labour candidates, instead of choosing the labour man, 
one of themselves, gives him only a small fraction of the 
total votes. Then, within the body of representatives, 
this process, by which greater influence is given to the able 
men, to those whose minds reflect most fully the whole 
people, is carried further still. A small group of these 
men exerts a predominant influence in all deliberations; 
and not only are they in the main the best qualified (for 
they only attain their leading positions by success in an 
intense and long continued competition) but they are put 
in a position in which they can hardly fail to feel a great 
responsibility resting upon them; and in which they feel 
the full force of political traditions. The deliberative 
organisation of the American nation illustrates, when 
compared with our own, the importance of these tradi- 
tions, for its lesser efficiency is largely due to the absence 



26o National Mind and Chairacter 

of such traditions, and to the fact that their system ban- 
ishes from the House of Representatives its natural leaders 
and those on whom responsibility falls most heavily. 

Lastly, the existence of two traditionally opposed parties 
ensures that every important step shall be fully discussed. 
The traditional division into two parties, which from one 
point of view seems so irrational, nevertheless exerts very 
important and valuable influences, of which the chief is 
that it prevents the assembly of legislators becoming a 
mere psychological crowd easily swayed to a decision by 
collective emotion and skilful suggestion; for each sugges- 
tion coming from the one party acts by contra-suggestion 
upon the other and provokes an opposition that necessi- 
tates discussion.^ 

In these two ways, then; — first, through the culmina- 
tion of national deliberation among a selected group of 
representatives, among whom again custom and tradition 
accord precedence and prestige to the natural leaders, the 
most able and those in whose consciousness the nation, in 
the past, present, and future, is most adequately reflected; 
secondly, by means of the party system, which ensures 
vigorous criticism and full discussion of all proposals, 
under a system of traditional conventions evolved for the 
regulation of such discussions — in these two ways the 
principal vices of collective deliberation are corrected, 
and the formal deliberations and decisions of the nation 
are raised to a higher plane than the collective delibera- 
tions of any assembly of men lacking such traditional 
organisation could possibly attain. The part played by 
unwritten tradition in the working of the British con- 
stitution is of coiu'se immense, as for example, the existence 

» President Lowell {op. cit.) has clearly shown other benefits resulting 
from the party system ; he shows especially how the party is needed to pre- 
pare a program and select candidates, if the popular vote is to give expres- 
sion to the dominant opinion of the people. 



Nations of the Higher Type 261 

and enormous prestige of the cabinet, and the tradition 
that a party coming into power must respect the legislation 
of the party previously in power. Without this last, 
representative government, or at any rate the party sys- 
tem, would be impossible. The smooth working of the 
system depends entirely upon the influence of these and 
similar traditions which exist only in the minds of men. 
Or, take as another example, the tradition of absolute 
impartiality on the part of the Speaker and of loyal ac- 
ceptance of his rulings by every member of the House; 
or the tradition which distinguishes sharply between 
political and private relations, in virtue of which the 
parties to a most bitter political strife may and very 
generally do remain in perfectly friendly private relations. 
These and other such traditions, which secure the 
efficient working of the organisation for national delibera- 
tion, all rest in turn upon a traditional and tacit 
assumption — namely, the assumption that both parties are 
working for the good of the nation as they conceive and 
understand it, that both parties have this common end and 
differ only in their judgment as to the means by which it 
can best be achieved. They rest also on the traditional 
and tacit admission that one's own judgment, and that of 
one's party, may be mistaken, and that in the long run the 
legislation which any party can effect is an expression of 
the organised national mind and is therefore to be re- 
spected. It is this acquiescence in accomplished legisla- 
tion in virtue of this tacit assumption which gives to the 
decisions of Parliament the status, not merely of the ex- 
pression of the will of a bare majority, but of the expression 
of the will of practically the whole nation. Underlying 
the stability of the whole system, again, is the tradition, 
sedulously fostered and observed by the best and leading 
minds, that the raison d'etre and purpose of the representa- 
tive parliament is to organise, and to give the most com- 



262 National Mind and Character 

plete possible expression to, the national mind and will; 
and that no constitutional change or change of procedure 
is justifiable unless it tends to the more complete realisa- 
tion of these objects. 

In virtue of these traditions our Parliament and Press 
constitute undoubtedly the best means for effecting or- 
ganisation of the national mind in its deliberative aspect 
that has yet been evolved ; and we should remember this 
when we feel inclined to gird at the "great talking shop" 
at the slowness of its procedure and at the logical absurdi- 
ties of the two-party system; and, above all, we should 
realise how valuable and worthy of conservation are these 
scarcely formulated traditions, for they are absolutely 
essential to its efficiency. It is just because the efficiency 
of the deliberative organisation of a nation depends upon 
the force of such traditions, that, though it is possible to 
take the system of parliamentary representation and 
estabHsh it by decree or plebiscite in a nation which has 
hitherto had no such deliberative organisation, it is not 
possible to make it work smoothly and efficiently amongst 
such a people. Hence, although almost every civilised 
nation has done its best to imitate the British system of 
parliamentary government, hardly any one has made a 
success of it; and, in nearly all, it is in constant danger of 
being superseded by some more primitive form of govern- 
ment — one need only mention Mexico, Portugal, Russia, J 
France, Austria-Hungary. In all these countries, and 
even in America, there seems to be already a not very , 
remote possibility of the supersession of parliamentary ) 
government by a dictatorship — a process which has actu- ^ 
ally occurred in many of the municipal governments of 
America, and the fear of which has constantly checked the 
smooth working of the parliamentary system in France. | 

As a single illustration of the way in which the conditions 
we have been considering affect the collective acts of the 



Nations of the Higher Type 263 

nation, consider what happened at the time of the Russian 
outrage in the North Sea during the Russo-Japanese war. 
When a Russian fleet fired upon our fishing boats doing 
considerable damage to them, the means of communica- 
tion were sufficiently developed among us to allow of 
the action and reaction of all on each which produces 
the characteristic results of collective mental action, the 
exaltation of emotion, the suggestibility, the sense of 
irresponsible power; and, in the absence of the deliberative 
organisation which, by concentrating influence and re- 
sponsibility in the hands of a few of the best men, con- 
trolled and modified this collective action, we should have 
rushed upon the Russian fleet and probably have brought 
on a general European war. The control and counter- 
action of this kind of outburst of collective emotion and 
impulsive action is one of the heaviest responsibilities of 
those to whom predominant influence is accorded. 

It is only in virtue of the strong organisation of the 
national mind resting upon these long traditions of par- 
liamentary government, that at such a time control of the 
popular emotion and impulse is possible. And the weaker 
and less efficient is such traditional organisation, the more 
does any such incident tend to provoke a collective mani- 
festation which approximates in its uncontrollable violence 
and unconsidered impulsiveness to the behaviour of an 
unorganised crowd. Hence governments, where the 
democratic principle is acknowledged but the traditional 
organisation is less strong, are constantly in danger of 
having their hands forced by some outburst of popular 
passion — as in France. 

It is worth noting that, when Aristotle inveighed against 
democracy as an evil form of government, the only form 
of democratic government he had in mind was government 
by the voices of a mob gathered together in one place and 
lacking all the safeguards which, as we have seen, render 



264 National Mind eind Character 

our British national deliberations so much superior to 
those of a mere crowd of persons of equally good average 
capacity and character. 

But it is not only in the formal deliberations of the na- 
tion that internal organisation, resting on tradition, secures 
the predominance of the influence of the best and ablest 
minds. The same is true of all national thought and feel- 
ing. There exists in every great nation the vague influ- 
ence we call public opinion, which is the great upholder 
of right and justice, which rewards virtue and condemns 
vice and selfishness. Public opinion exists only in the 
_minds of individuals (for we have rejected, provisionally 
at least, the conception of a collective consciousness); 
yet it is a product not of individual, but of collective, 
mental life. And it has in any healthy nation far higher 
standards of right and justice and tolerance than the 
majority of individuals could form or maintain ; that is to 
say, it is in these respects far superior to an opinion which 
would be the mere resultant or algebraic sum of the opin- 
ions of all the living individuals. In reference to any 
particular matter its judgment is far superior to that of the 
average of individuals, and superior probably in many 
cases to that which even the best individuals could form 
for themselves. 

How does public opinion come to be superior to individ- 
ual and to average opinion ? There seems to be something 
paradoxical in the statement. 

The fact is of the utmost importance ; for public opinion 
is the ultimate source of sanctions of all public acts, the 
highest court of appeal before which every executive act 
performed in the name of the nation must justify itself. 
If public opinion were merely the immediate expression 
of the collective feelings and judgments of an unorganised 
mass of men, its verdicts would be (as we have seen) 
inferior to those of the average individuals, whereas, as a 



Nations of the Higher Type 265 

matter of fact, its expressions are much superior to those 
of the average individuals. 

The influence of public opinion is especially clear and 
interesting in its relations to law. In this country it is 
not made by law, but makes law. Where law is imposed 
and long maintained by the authority of despotic power, 
it will of course mould public opinion; but, in any pro- 
gressive highly organised nation, law and the lawyers are 
always one or two or more generations behind public 
opinion. The most progressive body of law formally 
embodies the public opinion of the past generations rather 
than of the generation living at the time. 

The fact of the superiority of public opinion is generally 
admitted and various explanations are current, for 
the most part very vague and incomplete. There is 
the mystical explanation embodied in the dictum that the 
voice of the people is the voice of God. A rather less 
vague explanation is that adopted by Mr. Beattie Crozier' 
(among others). It is said that the average man carries 
within him a germ of an ideal of justice and right, and 
that he applies this to the criticism or approval of the 
actions of other men ; though he often fails to apply it to 
his own actions, because, where his own interests are con- 
cerned, he is apt to be the sport of purely egoistic impulses. 

But this explanation is only partially true. It repre- 
sents the average man as more hypocritical than he really 
is, and as falling farther below the standards he acknow- 
ledges than he actually does fall. It leaves unexplained the 
fact that he has this sentiment for an ideal of justice and 
right ; and it proceeds on a false assumption as to the na- 
ture of the problem, in assuming that men judge the ac- 
tions of other men by higher standards than those which 
they apply to their own conduct; whereas this is by no 
means generally true. 

* Cp. his Civilisation and Progress. 



266 National Mind and Character 

Is it, then, that superior abihties, which enable a man 
to gain prestige and to impress his ideas and sentiments 
upon his fellow men and so to influence public opinion, are 
commonly combined with a natural superiority of moral 
sentiment, with a love of right and a hatred of injustice? 
There may be some degree of such natural correlation of 
superior abilities with superior moral qualities, but the 
supposition seems very doubtful; and certainly, if it 
exists, it is not sufficient to account for the elevation of 
public opinion. We frequently see consummate ability 
combined with most questionable moral sentiments, as in 
Napoleon and many other historic personages. 

The true explanation is, I submit, to be found in the 
basal fact that the moral sentiments are essentially altruis- 
tic, while the immoral and non-moral sentiments are in 
the main self -regarding. ^ Hence, the person who has 
great abilities but is lacking in moral sentiments and al- 
truism applies his abilities to secure his personal satisfac- 
tions and aggrandisement; and, in so far as he aims at 
affecting the minds of others, he tries only to secure their 
obedience to his commands and suggestions, to inspire 
them with deference, admiration, fear and awe, and to 
evoke an outward display of these feelings. But, as to 
the ideas and sentiments of the people in general, save in 
so far as they affect his own gratification, he cares nothing. 
Accordingly we never find great abilities deliberately, 
consistently, and directly applied to the degradation of 
public opinion and morals, save occasionally in relation to 
some particular end. And we find few or no great works of 
literature and art deliberately aiming at such degradation. 

But with those persons in whom great abilities are na- 
turally combined with moral disposition the case is very 
different. The moral disposition is essentially altruistic; 

^ On the nature and development of the moral sentiments in the in- 
dividual mind, see my Social Psychology, Chapter VIII. 



Nations of the Higher Type 267 

it is concerned for the welfare of others, of men in general. 
Hence such a man deliberately applies his abilities to in- 
fluence the minds of others. The exertion of such influ- 
ence is for him an end in itself. He seeks and finds his 
chief satisfaction in exerting an influence, as wide and 
deep as possible, over the minds of men; not merely in 
evoking fear or admiration of himself, but in inspiring in 
them the same elevated sentiments and sympathies 
which he finds within himself. 

For this reason such men as G. F. Watts, Carlyle, and 
Ruskin exert a much greater and more widespread and 
lasting influence over the minds of men than do equally 
able men who are devoid of moral disposition; for the 
former make the exertion of this influence their chief end, 
while the others care not at all about the state of public 
opinion and the minds of the mass. Still less does the 
non-moral man of great ability strive with all his powers 
to make others act upon base motives like his own and to 
degrade their sentiments ; rather, he sees that he can better 
accomplish his selfish ends if other men are unlike himself 
and are governed by altruistic sentiments ; and he sees also 
that he can better attain his ends if he does lip-service to 
altruistic ideals; and he is, therefore, apt to exert whatever 
direct influence he has over the sentiments of men in the 
same direction as the moral leaders, praising the same 
actions, upholding in words the same ideals. In this way 
the men of great abilities, but of immoral or non-moral 
character, actually aid the moral leaders to some extent 
in their work; whereas under no conditions is the relation 
reversed; the moral leaders never praise or acquiesce in 
bad actions, but always denounce them and use their 
influence against them. 

It follows that, in a well-organised nation, public opin- 
ion, which is formed and maintained so largely by the 
influence of leading personalities, will usually be more in 



268 National Mind and Character 

conformity with the sentiments of the best men than of the 
average man, will be above rather than below private 
opinion. For, if the bad and the good men of exceptional 
powers were equal in numbers and capacity, the sum of 
their influences tending directly to exalt public opinion 
would be enormously greater than the sum of their influ- 
ences tending to degrade it; and, as a matter of fact, the 
influence for good of a few altruistic leaders is able to out- 
weigh the degrading influences of a much larger number 
of purely selfish men of equally great capacities, and is able 
to maintain a high standard of public opinion. 

We have distinguished a formal and an informal organ- 
isation of the national deliberative processes, the latter 
expressing itself as public opinion. These two organisa- 
tions co-exist and are, of course, not altogether indepen- 
dent of one another; yet they may be to a considerable 
extent independent; though the more intimate the func- 
tional relations and the greater the harmony between them 
the healthier will be the national life. 

We may note in passing an interesting difference in re- 
spect to organisation of the national mind between the 
English and the American peoples, a difference which 
illustrates this relative independence of the formal and 
informal organisations. 

In England both the formal and informal organisations 
have achieved a pretty good level; in both cases the best 
minds are enabled to exert and have long exerted a dom- 
inant influence; and the interaction between the two 
organisations is very intimate. But in America, while the 
informal organisation expressed in public opinion seems 
to be very highly developed, the form.al organisation is 
much inferior; it has not yet such traditions as give the 
greatest influence to the best minds and embody the effects 5 j 
of their influence. And the better Americans tend to 
value lightly the formal organisation, to take no part in 






Nations of the Higher Type 269 

the working of it, deliberately to ignore it, and to rely- 
rather upon public opinion to repress any evils when they 
are in danger of reaching an intolerable development. 

Both in the formal organisation of the national mind, 
which is the parliamentary or other national assembly, 
and in the informal organisation which is public opinion, 
we see, then, that (in the nation of higher civilisation at 
least) organisation results in a raising of the collective 
mental process above the level of the average minds, be- 
cause it gives a predominant influence to the best minds 
who form and maintain the traditions, especially the moral 
traditions; and these press upon the minds of all members 
of the community from their earliest years, moulding them 
more or less into conformity with themselves, fostering 
the better, repressing the purely egoistic, tendencies. 

And the ideal organisation after which we ought to 
strive, is that which would give the greatest possible in- 
fluence of this sort to the best minds, an influence which 
consists not in merely organising and directing the ener- 
gies of the people in the manner most effective for material 
or even scientific progress, as in modern Germany; but 
one which, by moulding the sentiments and guiding the 
reasoning of the people in all matters, public and private 
alike, secures their consent and agreement and the co- 
operation of their wills in all affairs of national importance. 

When such organisation is in any degree attained and a 
more or less consistent system of national traditions is 
embodied in the political, religious, Hterary, and scientific 
culture, which moulds in some degree the minds of all men, 
the national mind clearly becomes, as we said in an earlier 
chapter, a system of interacting mental forces which are 
not merely tendencies of the living members of the nation, 
but are also, in an even greater degree, the ideas and 
tendencies of the dead; and we see also that in such a 
people the national consciousness is most truly embodied, 



270 National Mind and Character 

not in the minds of the average men, but in the minds of 

the best men of the time. 

The term "pubHc opinion" is sometimes, perhaps gen- 
erally, used in a looser and wider sense than the meaning 
implied in the foregoing pages. It is used in the looser 
sense by President Lowell in his Public Opinion and Popu- 
lar Government. By ''public opinion" he seems to mean 
simply the algebraic sum or balance of individual opinions; 
he writes ''the opinion of the whole people is only the 
collected opinions of all the persons therein."^ In ac- 
cordance with this view, he regards representative in- 
stitutions as merely one means by which this sum of 
opinions may be collected and recorded. And he seems to 
be prepared to regard the "referendum" or the "initiative" 
in any of their forms, or other methods of direct legislation, 
as equally good methods, if only all individuals would take 
the trouble to register their votes upon every question 
proposed to them. He is aware, of course, that this can 
hardly be expected of persons who have other interests and 
occupations than the purely political, and that the direct 
methods are therefore impracticable as general methods 
of legislation. If it were true that representative institu- 
tions do and should merely collect and record the individ- 
ual opinions of all members of the public, then it is obvious 
that each representative should be merely a delegate sent 
to record the votes of the majority of his constituents. 
Whereas, if representative institutions should, and in 
various degrees do, constitute the formal deliberative 
organisation of the national mind, through which national 
deliberation and judgment are raised to a higher plane than 
that of a mere crowd, it follows that the representative 
should exert his own powers of reasoning and judgment, 
aided by his special knowledge and equipment, by the 
special sources of information that he enjoys, in the Hght 

^Op. cit., p. 210. 



Nations of the Higher Type 271 

of the discussions in which he takes part, and influenced 
by all those political traditions whose force he experiences 
in exceptional fulness by reason of his privileged position. 
President Lowell, in discussing the functions of the repre- 
sentative, does not decide in favour of the former view, as 
consistency should perhaps lead him to do; thereby show- 
ing that he is not wholly committed to the individualist 
view. He discusses the question whether the member of 
Parliament or Congress should regard himself as represent- 
ing the interests of his constituents alone, or as concerned 
primarily and chiefly with the interests of the whole people 
and he rightly inclines to the latter view. This is not quite 
the same distinction as that which is insisted upon in these 
pages. Even if each representative were concerned only 
for the welfare of the nation as a whole, yet so long as he 
regarded it as his sole function to vote as he believes the 
majority of the citizens would vote in any process of direct 
legislation, he would fall short of the highest duty which is 
laid upon him by his position — namely, not merely that of 
recording the opinion of the majority, but that of taking 
part in the organised deliberative activities of the national 
mind by which it arrives at judgments and decisions of a 
higher order than any purely individual, or algebraic sum 
of individual, judgments and decisions.' 

Public opinion, in the sense in which I have used the 
words in this chapter (which seems to me the only proper 
use of them) is, then, not a mere sum of individual opinions 
upon any particular question; it is rather the expression of 
that tone or attitude of mind which prevails throughout 
the nation and owes its quahty far more to the influence of 
the dead than of the living, being the expression of the 
moral sentiments that are firmly and traditionally estab- 

* In this connection I would refer the reader to The New State by M. P. 
FoUett (London, 191 8) an interesting book in which the true nature and 
function of collective deliberation is forcibly expounded. 



272 National Mind and Character 

lished in the mind of the people, and established more 
effectively and in more refined forms in the minds of the 
leaders of public opinion than in the average citizen. 
This tone of the national mind enables it to arrive at just 
judgments on questions of right and wrong, of duty and 
honour and public desert ; though it may have Httle bear- 
ing upon such practical questions as bimetallism, tariff 
reform, or railway legislation. The current use of the 
term, in this country at least, does, I think, recognise 
that public opinion properly applies only to the sphere of 
moral judgments and can and should have no bearing 
upon the practical details of legislation. Public opinion 
is, both in its development and in its operations, essentially 
collective; it is essentially the work of the group mind. 
Its accepted standards of value are slowly built up under 
the influence of the moral leaders of past ages; and, in the 
application of those standards to any particular question, 
the influence of the moral leaders of the time makes itself 
felt. I have kept in mind in the foregoing pages the 
public opinion of the nation; but every community, every 
association, every enduring group has its own public 
opinion, which, though it is influenced by, and indeed is, 
as it were, a branch of, the main stem of national public 
opinion and is therefore of the same fibre and texture, has 
nevertheless its own peculiar tone and quality, especially 
in regard to the moral questions with which each group is 
specially concerned. 



PART III 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL MIND 
AND CHARACTER 



CHAPTER XIV 
Introductory 

IN the first Part of this book we have reviewed the most 
general principles of collective mental life, beginning 
with the unorganised crowd as affording the simplest 
example, considering then an army as the simplest example 
of the profound modifications of collective mental life 
effected by organisation of the group. In the second Part 
we passed on to apply these principles to the understand- 
ing of the mind of the nation as the most important, com- 
plex, and interesting of all types of the group mind. 

In the third Part I take up the consideration in a gen- 
eral way of the processes by which national mind and 
character are gradually built up and shaped in the long 
course of ages. For just as we cannot understand indi- 
vidual minds, their peculiarities and differences, without 
studying their development, so we cannot hope to under- 
stand national mind and character and the pecuHarities 
and differences of nations, without studying the slow 
processes through which they have been built up in the 
course of centuries. 

In an earlier chapter, in connection with the question of 
the importance of homogeneity of mental qualities as a 
condition of the existence of the national mind, I argued 
that race has really considerable influence in moulding the 
type of national mind. I recognised that differences of 
innate qualities between races, at any rate between allied 
subraces, are not great, and that they can be, and generally 

275 



276 Development of National Character 

are, almost completely over-ridden and obscured in each 
individual by the moulding power of the social environ- 
ment in which he grows up ; but I urged that these racial 
qualities are very persistent, and that they exert a slight 
but constant pressure or bias upon the development of all 
that constitutes social environment, upon the forms of 
institutions, customs, traditions, and beliefs of every kind, 
so that the effect of such slight but constant bias accumu- 
lates from generation to generation, and in the long run 
exerts an immense influence. 

One way of treating the part played by the racial mental 
qualities in the development of the national mind would 
be to attempt to define the racial or innate peculiarities of 
the peoples existing at the present time, and to assume 
that these peculiarites were produced in the remote past, 
before the formation of nations began, and that they have 
persisted unchanged throughout the period of the develop- 
ment of nations. Something of this sort was proposed by 
Walter Bagehot in his Physics and Politics. He distin- 
guished in the development of peoples two great periods — 
on the one hand the race-making period, which roughly 
corresponds to the whole prehistoric period, and on the 
other hand the nation-making period, which roughly 
corresponds to the historic period. This distinction has 
undoubtedly a certain ..validity. 

It seems probable that man was evolved from his pre- 
human ancestry as a single stock, probably a stock some- 
what widely distributed in the heart of the Eurasian 
continent, or possibly in Africa according to the recent view 
of some authors, or in the area which is now the Indian 
Ocean. If this be true, it follows that the differentiation 
of the mental and physical qualities of the principal hu- 
man races, the differentiation of the white and black and 
yellow and brown races, as well as of the chief subraces, 
such as the Semitic, the races of Europe — the Homo 



Factors of National Development 277 

EuropcEus, Alpinus and Mediterraneus — was the work of 
the immensely prolonged prehistoric period. For these 
races and subraces, as we now know them, seem to have 
been in existence and to have had recognisably and sub- 
stantially the same leading qualities, both mental and 
physical, that they now have, before the beginning of the 
historic period. 

The racial differentiation during the prehistoric period 
must have been much greater than during the historic 
period; and this was not only because the former period 
was immensely longer, but also because, in all probability, 
the rate of racial change has been on the whole slower in 
the historic period. 

The differentiation of racial types in the prehistoric 
period must have been in the main the work of differences 
of physical environment, operating directly by way of 
selection, by way of the adaptation of each race to its 
environment through the extermination of the strains least 
suited to exist under those physical conditions. But 
this process, this direct moulding of racial types by physi- 
cal environment, must have been well nigh arrested as 
soon as nations began to form. For the formation of 
nations implies the beginning of civilisation ; and civilisa- 
tion very largely consists in the capacity of a people to 
subdue their physical environment, or at least to adapt 
the physical environment to men's needs to a degree that 
renders them far less the sport of it than was primitive 
man; it consists, in short, in replacing man's natural 
environment by an artificial environment largely of his 
own choice and creation. 

In a second and perhaps even more important way, the 
formation of nations with the development of civilisation 
modified and weakened the moulding influence of the 
physical environment; namely, it introduced social co- 
operation in an ever increasing degree, so that the per- 



278 Development of Nationeil Character 

petual struggle of individuals and of small family groups 
with one another and with nature was replaced by a co- 
operative struggle of large communities against the 
physical environment and with one another. And in this 
process those members of each community who, by reason 
of weakness, general incapacity, or other peculiarity, 
would have been liable to be eliminated under primitive 
conditions became shielded in an ever increasing degree 
by the powers of the stronger and more capable against 
the selective power of nature and against individual hu- 
man forces. And, although within the community the 
rivalry of individuals and families still went on, it was no 
longer so much a direct struggle for existence, but rather 
became more and more a struggle for position in the social 
scale; and failure in the struggle no longer necessarily 
meant death, or even incapacity to leave an average 
number of descendants. That is to say, primitive man's 
struggle for existence against the forces of nature and 
against his fellow men, which made for racial evolution 
and differentiation through survival of those fittest to 
cope with various environments, tended to be replaced 
by a struggle which no longer made for racial evolution 
towards a higher type, and which may even have made 
for race-deterioration, at the same time that civilisation 
and national organisation continued to progress. 

We may, then, recognise a certain truth in Bagehot's 
distinction of two great periods, the race-making and the 
nation-making periods. Neverthless, it would not be 
satisfactory to follow the course suggested above and 
simply assume certain racial characters as given fixed 
data without further consideration. For, firstly, it is 
interesting and perhaps not altogether unprofitable to 
indulge in speculations on the race-making processes of 
the prehistoric period. Secondly, although it seems likely 
that racial changes have been in the main slower and on 



Factors of National Development 279 

the whole relatively slight in the historic period, yet they 
have not been altogether lacking; and, in proportion to 
their magnitude, such changes as have occurred have been 
of great importance for national life; and changes of this 
kind are still pla3ring their part in shaping the destinies of 
nations. Possible racial changes of mental qualities must 
therefore be considered, when we seek to give a general 
account of the conditions of the development of nations. 

On the other hand, we must reject root and branch the 
crude idea, which has a certain popular currency, that the 
development of civilisation and of nations implies a par- 
allel evolution of individual minds. That idea we have 
already touched upon and rejected in a previous chapter, 
where we arrived at the conclusion that there is no reason 
to suppose the present civilised peoples to be on the whole 
innately superior to their barbaric ancestors. 

If we use the word ** tradition" in the widest possible 
sense to denote all the intellectual and moral gains of 
past generations, in so far as they are not innate but are 
handed on from one generation to another by the personal 
intercourse of the younger with the older generation, and 
if we allow the notion of tradition to include all the in- 
stitutions and customs that are passed on from generation 
to generation, then we may class all the changes of a 
people that constitute the evolution of a national character 
under the two heads : evolution of innate qualities and evolu- 
tion of traditions. Using the word ''tradition" in the wide 
sense just now indicated, the traditions of a people may be 
said to include the recognised social organisation of the 
whole people into classes, castes, clans, phratries, or groups 
of any kind, whose relations to one another and whose 
place in the national system are determined by law, cus- 
tom, and conventions of various kinds. This part of the 
total tradition is relatively independent of the rest, and 
we may usefully distinguish the development of such social 



28o Development of National Character 

organisation as social evolution — giving to the term this 
restricted and definite meaning — and we may set it along- 
side the other two conceptions as of co-ordinate value. 

If we thus set apart for consideration under a distinct 
head the evolution of social organisation, the rest of the 
body of national traditions may be said to constitute the 
civiHsation of a people. For the civilisation of a people 
at any time is essentially the sum of the moral and intel- 
lectual traditions that are living and operative among 
them at that particular time. We are apt in a loose way 
to consider the civilisation of a people to consist in its 
material evidences ; but it is only in so far as these material 
evidences, the buildings, industries, arts, products, ma- 
chinery, and so forth, are the expression and outcome of 
its mental state that they are in any degree a measure of 
its civilisation. We may realise this most clearly by 
considering the case of a people on which the material 
products of civilisation have been impressed from without. 
Thus the peasants of India Hve amongst, and make use of, 
and benefit materially by, the railways and irrigation 
works created by their British rulers, and are protected 
from invasion and from internal anarchy by the British 
military organisation and equipment; and they play a 
subordinate though essential part in the creation and 
maintenance of all these material evidences of civiHsation. 
But these material evidences are not the expression of the 
mental state of the peoples of India, and form no true part 
of their civilisation; and, in fact, they affect their civilisa- 
tion astonishingly Httle; although if these products of a 
higher civilisation should be maintained for a long period 
of time they would, no doubt, produce changes of their 
civilisation, probably tending in some degree to assimilate 
their mental state to that of Western Europe. 

We may, then, with advantage distinguish between the 
social organisation and the civilisation of a people. In 



Factors of National Development 281 

doing so we are of course making an effort of abstraction 
which, though it results in an artificial separation of things 
intimately related, is nevertheless useful and therefore 
justifiable. In a similar way the progress of civihsation 
may be distinguished from social evolution. Social 
evolution is profoundly affected by the progress of civihsa- 
tion, and in turn reacts powerfully upon it; for any given 
social organisation may greatly favour or obstruct the 
further progress of civilisation. There could have been 
no considerable advance of civilisation without the evolu- 
tion of some social organisation; but that the two things 
are distinct is clear, when we reflect that there may be a 
very complex social organisation, implying a long course 
of social evolution, among a people that has hardly the 
rudiments of civilisation. Extreme instances of social 
organisation in the absence of civilisation are afforded by 
some animal societies — for example, societies of ants, bees, 
and wasps. Among peoples, the native tribes of AustraHa 
illustrate the fact most forcibly. They are at the very 
bottom of the scale of civilisation; yet it has been dis- 
covered that they have a complex and well-defined social 
organisation, which can only have been achieved by a long 
course of social evolution. These people are divided into 
totem clans, which clans are grouped in phratries, each 
individual being born, according to well-recognised rules, 
into a clan of which he remains a life-long member ; and his 
membership in the clan and phratry involves certain well- 
defined rights and obligations, and well-defined relations 
to other persons, especially as regards marriage; and these 
rights, obHgations, and relations are recognised and rigidly 
maintained throughout immense areas. 

On the other hand, although no people has attained any 
considerable degree of civilisation without considerable 
social organisation, nevertheless we can at least imagine a 
people continuing to enjoy a high civihsation, practising 



282 Development of National Character 

and enjoying much of the arts, sciences, philosophy, and 
Hterature, which we regard as the essentials of civilisation, 
yet retaining a bare minimum of social organisation. And 
this state of affairs is not only conceivable, but is held up 
as a practicable ideal by philosophical anarchists such as 
Tolstoi and Kropotkin ; and it is, I think, true to say that 
the American nation presents an approximation to this 
condition. 

Again, a very high state of civilisation may co-exist with 
a relatively primitive social organisation. Thus the 
civilisation of Athens in the classical age was equal to, or 
even superior to, our own in many respects ; yet the social 
organisation was very much less highly evolved. It had 
hardly emerged from the barbaric patriarchal condition, 
and had at its foundation a cruel system of slavery;' 
and it had also another great point of inferiority — namely, 
the very restricted number of persons included in the social 
system. These deficiencies, this rudimentary character, 
of its social organisation was the principal cause of the 
instability and brief endurance of that brilliant civilisation. 

We have so far distinguished three principal factors or 
groups of factors in the evolution of national mind and 
character: (i) Evolution of innate or racial qualities: (2) 
Development of civilisation: (3) Social evolution, or the 
development of social organisation. I 

Now the first two of these we may with advantage 
divide under two parallel heads, the heads of intellectual 
and moral development. No doubt, the intellectual and 
the moral endowment of a people continually react on each 
other; and many of the manifestations of the national mind 
are jointly determined by the intelligence and the morality 
of a people ; especially perhaps is this true of their religion 
and their art. Nevertheless, it is clear that we can dis- 
tinguish pretty sharply between the intellectual and the 

^ Cf. W. R. Patterson, The Nemesis of Nations, London, 1906. 



Factors of National Development 283 

moral traditions of a people; and that these may vary- 
independently of one another to a great extent. A rich 
and full intellectual tradition may go with a moral tradi- 
tion of very low level, as in the Italian civilisation of the 
renascence; and a very high moral tradition with a relative 
poverty of the intellectual, as in the early days of the 
puritan settlements of New England. 

The same distinction between the intellectual and the 
moral level is harder to draw in the case of the racial 
qualities of a people, but it undoubtedly exists and is valid 
in principle, no matter how difficult in practice to deal 
with. 

We have, then, to distinguish five classes of factors, five 
heads under which all the factors which determine the 
evolution of national character may be distributed. They 
are 

(i) Innate moral disposition 1 . . ... 

(2) Innate intellectual capacities j 

(3) Moral tradition 1 ^. . . ... ^. 

/ \ T ^ 11 J. -i J. j-^- r national civilisation. 

(4) Intellectual tradition J 

(5) Social organisation. 

Every nation that has advanced from a low level to a 
higher level of national life has done so in virtue of develop- 
ment or progress in one or more of these respects. And a 
principal part of our task, in considering the evolution of 
national mind and character, is to assign to each of these 
its due importance and its proper place in the whole com- 
plex development. 

The distinction between the racial and the traditional 
level of a people is too often ignored ; chiefly, perhaps, for 
the reason that it has usually been assumed that whatever 
is traditional becomes innate and racial through use. 
Since in recent years it has been shown that this assump- 



284 Development of National Character 

tion is very questionable, a number of authors have recog- 
nised the importance of the distinction as regards the 
intellectual qualities of a people ; but, as regards the moral 
qualities, the distinction is still very generally overlooked. 
. The neglect of these distinctions between the innate 
and the traditional has in great measure vitiated much of 
the keen dispute that has been waged over the question 
whether the progress of civilisation depends primarily on 
intellectual or on moral advance. For example, T. H. 
Buckle and Benjamin Kidd agreed in recognising clearly 
the distinction between the innate and the traditional intel- 
lectual status of a people ; and they agreed in maintaining 
that we have no reason to believe that in the historic period 
any people has made any considerable advance in innate 
intellectual capacity ; and that any such advance, if there 
has been any, has not been a principal factor in the pro- 
gress of civilisation. But they differed extremely in that 
Buckle maintained that the primary cause of all progress 
of national life is the improvement of its intellectual tradi- 
tion, that is, increase in the quantity and the worth of its 
stock of knowledge and accepted beliefs, and improve- 
ments in methods of intellectual operation; and he held 
that improvements of morals and of social organisation 
have been secondary results of these intellectual gains. 
Kidd, on the other hand, ' maintained that the progress of 
European civilisation has been primarily due to an im- 
provement of the morality of peoples ; that this has led to 
improvement of social organisation; and that this in turn 
has been the essential condition of the progress of the 
intellectual tradition, because it has secured a stable social 
environment, a security of life, a free field for the exercise 
of intellectual powers; in the absence of which conditions 
the intellectual powers of a nation cannot effectively or- 

^ Social Evolution, Principle of Western Civilisation, and The Science of 
Power. 



Factors of National Development 285 

ganise themselves and apply themselves to the under- 
standing of man and nature, or to securing the traditional 
perpetuation of the gains which they may sporadically 
achieve. We have to examine these views and try to 
determine what truth they contain, and to show that 
they are not wholly opposed but can in some measure be 
combined. 

I propose to make first a very brief critical survey of 
some of the most notable attempts that have been made to 
account for racial qualities, and I shall try to supplement 
and harmonise these as far as possible. We may with 
advantage consider at the outset the race-making period, 
and afterwards go on to consider changes of racial qualities 
in the historic period. This Part of the book is necessarily 
somewhat speculative, but its interest and importance for 
our main topic may justify its inclusion. 



CHAPTER XV 
The Race-Making Period 

LET us now see what can be said about the process of 
racial differentiation which, as we saw in the fore- 
going chapter, was in its main features accomplished 
in the prehistoric or race-making period. We cannot hope 
to reach many positive conclusions, but rather merely to 
discuss certain possibiHties and probabilities in regard to 
the main factors of the differentiation of racial mental 
types. 

I would point out at once that the answer to be given 
to the question — Are acquired qualities transmitted ? Are 
the effects of use inherited? is all important for our topic. 
I do not propose to discuss that difficult question now. 
I will merely say that the present state of biological science 
makes it seem doubtful whether such inheritance takes 
place, and that, although the question remains open, we 
are not justified in assuming an affirmative answer; that, 
therefore, we must not be satisfied with any explanation of 
racial and national characteristics based upon this assump- 
tion; and in the following discussion I shall provisionally 
assume the truth of the Neo-Darwinian principle that 
acquired modifications are not transmitted. 

Assuming, as we must, that all peoples are descended 
from some one original stock, the problem is — Can any- 
thing be said of the conditions which have determined the 
differentiation of races of different mental constitutions, of 
the development of racial qualities which, having become 

286 



The Race-Making Period 287 

relatively fixed, have led to the evolution of different types 
of national organisation and culture? And especially we 
have to consider the conditions which have produced, and 
may still produce in the future, the qualities that make for 
the progress of nations. 

We must suppose a certain social organisation to have 
obtained among that primitive human stock from which 
all races have been evolved, probably an organisation in 
small groups based on the family under the rule and leader- 
ship of a patriarch. » 

It is possible that considerable divergences of social 
organisation may have taken place, without any advance 
towards civilisation; such divergences of social organisa- 
tion must have tended to divert the course of mental evolu- 
tion along various lines; but they must themselves have 
had their causes; they cannot in themselves be the ulti- 
mate causes of divergence of racial mental types. 

Such ultimate causes of the differentiation of mental 
qualities must have been of two orders only, so far as I 
can see: (i) differences of physical environment: (2) spon- 
taneous variations in different directions of the innate 
mental qualities of individuals, especially of the more 
gifted and energetic individuals of each people. 

In the mental evolution of animals these two factors are 
not distinguishable. We may say that the main and 
perhaps the sole condition of their evolution is the selec- 
tion by the physical environment of spontaneous favour- 
able variations and mutations of innate mental qualities; 
if we include under the term physical environment of the 
species all the other animal and vegetable species of its 
habitat. For it is only by its selective influence upon 
individual variations that physical environment can deter- 
mine differentiation of races. 

But with man the case is different, spontaneous varia- 
tion not only provides the new qualities which, by deter- 



288 Development of National Character 

mining the survival of the individual in his struggle for 
existence with the physical environment, secure their own 
perpetuation by transmission to the aftercoming genera- 
tions. The new qualities determine mental evolution in 
another manner, by a mode of operation which is almost 
completely absent in animal evolution ; namely, the spon- 
taneous variations create a social environment which 
profoundly modifies the influence of the physical en- 
vironment, and itself becomes a principal factor in the 
determination of the trend of racial evolution. 

Man is distinguished from the animals above all things 
by his power of learning. Whereas the behaviour of ani- 
mals, even of the higher ones, consists almost entirely of 
purely instinctive actions, innate modes of response to a 
limited number of situations ; man has an indefinitely great 
capacity for acquiring new modes of response, and so of 
adapting himself in new and more complex ways to an 
almost indefinite variety of situations. And his new 
mental acquisitions are not made only by the slow process 
of adaptation in the light of his own individual experience 
of the consequences of behaviour of this and that kind; 
as are most of the few acquisitions of the animals. By far 
the greater part of the mental stock-in-trade by which his 
behaviour is guided is acquired from his fellow men; it 
represents the accumulated experience of all the foregoing ! 
generations of his race and nation. Man's life in society, 
together with the great plasticity of his mind, its great 
capacity for new adaptations, secures him this enormous 
advantage; the two things are necessarily correlated. 
Without the plasticity of mind, his life in society would 
benefit him relatively little. Many animals that lead a 
social life in large herds or flocks are not superior, but 
rather inferior, in mental power to animals that lead a more 
solitary life; and indeed this seems to be generally true, as 
we see on comparing generally the herbivorous gregarious 



The Race-Making Period 289 

animals with the solitary carnivores that prey upon them. 
The social life of such animals, rendering individual intelli- 
gence less necessary for protection and escape from danger, 
tends actually against mental development. 

On the other hand, man's great plastic brain would be 
of comparatively little use to him if he lived a solitary 
tmsocial life. His great brain is there to enable him to 
assimilate and make use of the accumulated experience, 
the sum of knowledge and morality, which is traditional in 
the society into which he is born a member; that is to say, 
the development of social life, which depended so much 
upon language and for the forwarding of which language 
came into existence, must have gone hand in hand with the 
development of the great brain, which enables full ad- 
vantage to be secured from social co-operation and which, 
especially, renders possible the accumulation of knowledge, 
belief, and traditional sentiment. 

Now this traditional stock of knowledge and morality 
has been very slowly accumulated, bit by bit; and every 
bit, every least new addition to it, has been a difficult 
acquisition, due in the first instance to some spontaneous 
variation of some individual's mental structure from the 
ancestral type of mental structure. That is to say, 
throughout the evolution of civilisation, progress of every 
kind, increase of knowledge or improvement of morality, 
has been due to the birth of more or less exceptional 
individuals, individuals varying ever so slightly from the 
ancestral type and capable, owing to this variation, of 
making sonie new and original adaptation of action, or of 
perceiving some previously undiscovered relation between 
things. 

These new acqusitions, first made by individuals, are, 
if true or useful, sooner or later imitated or accepted by the 
society of which the original-minded individual is a mem- 
ber, and then, becoming incorporated in the traditional 
19 



290 Development of National Character 

stock of knowledge and morality, are thereby placed at the 
service of all members of that society. 

Thus, favourable spontaneous variations do not, as with 
the animals, render possible mental evolution merely by 
conducing to the survival of, and the perpetuation of the 
qualities of, those individuals in whom the variations 
occur. They may do this, or they may not ; but, in addi- 
tion and more importantly, they contribute to the stock 
of traditional knowledge and morality, and so raise the 
social group as a whole in the scale of civilisation; they 
render it more capable of successfully contending against 
other groups and against the adverse influence of the 
physical environment ; and they promote the solidarity of 
the group by adding to its stock of common tradition; 
thus the acquisitions of each member benefit the group as 
a whole and all its members, quite apart from any philan- 
thropic purpose or intention of producing such a result. 

The achievement of this unconscious undesigned soH- 
darity of human societies is one of two great steps in the 
evolution of the human race by which the process is ren- 
dered very different from, and is raised to a higher plane 
than, the mental evolution of the animal world. The 
second and still more important step is one which is only 
just beginning to be achieved in the present age; I shall 
have to touch on it in a later chapter. 

The original or primary divergence of mental type 
between any two peoples must, then, have been due to 
these fundamental causes — namely, differences of physical 
environment and spontaneous variations of mental struc- 
ture, the latter adding to the traditional stock of know- 
ledge and belief, of moral precepts and sentiments. 

Intellectual or moral divergence produced by these two 
primary causes would tend to determine the course of social 
evolution along different Hnes and so to produce different 
types of social organisation. And different social organisa- 



The Race-Making Period 291 

tions thus produced would then react upon the moral and 
intellectual life of the people to produce further divergence; 
for example, one type of social organisation determined 
by physical environment, say a well developed patriarchal 
system, may have made for progress of intellect and 
morals; another, say a matriarchal organisation, or one 
based on communal marriage, may have tended to produce 
stagnation. 

As social evolution proceeded and brought about more 
extensive and more complex forms of social organisation, 
which included, within any one society or group, larger 
ntunbers of individuals in more effective forms of associa- 
tion, social organisation must have assumed a constantly 
increasing importance as a condition of mental evolution 
relatively to all other factors, especially as compared with 
the influence of physical environment; until, in the com- 
plex societies of the present time, it has an altogether pre- 
dominant importance. This truth is concisely stated in the 
old dictum that "in the infancy of nations men shape the 
State; in their maturity the State shapes the men." 
Accordingly, in considering the mental evolution of 
peoples we must never lose sight of the influence of social 
organisation. It follows that the conditions of the mental 
evolution of man are immensely more complex than those 
of the mental evolution of animals. 

We must recognise not only the selection, through sur- 
vival in the struggle for existence, of new mental qualities 
arising as spontaneous variations of individual mental 
structure. This, which is the only, or almost the only, 
process at work in the mental evolution of animals, is 
immensely complicated and overshadowed in importance 
by two processes. The first is the accumulation of 
knowledge and morality in traditional forms. The tradi- 
tional accumulation, which so far outweighs the mental 
equipment possible to any individual isolated from an old 



292 Development of National Character 

society, not only constitutes in itself a most important 
evolutionary product, but it modifies profoundly the 
conditions of evolution of the individual innate qualities 
of mind; for example, the greater and more valuable the 
stock of traditional knowledge and morality becomes, the 
more does fitness to survive consist in the capacity to 
assimilate this knowledge and to conform to these higher 
moral precepts, the less does it consist in the purely in- 
dividualistic qualities, such as quickness of eye and ear, 
fleetness of foot> or strength and skill of hand. Secondly, 
the processes of natural selection are complicated by the 
social evolution, which tends progressively to aboHsh the 
struggle for existence between individuals, and to replace 
it by a struggle between groups ; in which struggle success 
is determined not only by the qualities of individuals, but 
also very largely by the social organisation and by the 
traditional knowledge and morality of the groups. 

Each variety of the human species, each race considered 
as a succession of individuals having certain innate mental 
qualities, has been evolved, then, not merely under the 
influence of the physical environment, like the animal 
species, but also and to an ever increasing extent under the 
influence of the social environment. The social environ- 
ment we regard as consisting of two parts; namely, the 
social organisation and the body of social tradition; for 
these, though interdependent and constantly interacting 
may yet with advantage be kept apart in thought. We 
must, then, bear constantly in mind the fact that man 
creates for himself an environment which becomes ever 
more complex and influential, overshadowing more and 
more in importance the physical environment. 

Here I would revert to some points of the analogy, 
drawn in Chapter X, between the mind of a nation and 
that of an individual. The mind of an individual human 
being develops by accumulating the results of his expe- 



The Race-Making Period 293 

rience; and so does that of a people. In this respect the 
analogy holds good. But the development possible to an 
individual is strictly limited in two ways. First, by the 
short duration of the material basis of his mental life; 
secondly by the extent of his innate capacities. Neither 
of these limitations applies to the national mind. Its 
material basis is in principle immortal, because its in- 
dividual components may be incessantly renewed; and 
its development has no limit set to it by its innate capaci- 
ties, because these may be indefinitely extended and im- 
proved. In these respects the national mind resembles the 
species rather than the individual. 

The development of the national mind, and of the minds 
of those who share in the mental life of the nation, thus 
combines the methods and advantages of the development 
of individuals and of species, methods which are essen- 
tially different. The result is that the mental develop- 
ment of man, since his social life began, has been radically 
different from that of the animals ; it has been a social pro- 
cess; it has been the evolution of peoples rather than of 
individuals. The evolution of man as an individual has 
been subordinated to that of peoples; and it is incapable 
of being understood or profitably considered apart from 
the development of the group mind. 

Assuming, as we must, that all the races of men are 
derived from a common stock, it is obvious, I think, that 
the first differentiation of racial types was determined 
almost exclusively by differences of physical environment, 
and that the other conditions only very slowly developed 
and did not assume their predominant importance until 
the time which may be roughly defined as the beginning of 
the historic or nation-making period. 

Physical environment affects the mental qualities of a 
people in three ways: firstly, it directly influences the 
minds of each generation ; secondly, it moulds the mental 



294 Development of NationeJ Character 

constitution by natural selection, adapting the race to 
itself; thirdly, it exerts indirect influence by determining 
the occupations and modes of life and, through these, the 
social organisation of a people. We may consider these 
three modes of influence in turn. 

There has been much speculation on the direct influence 
of the physical environment in moulding the mental type 
of a people, but little or nothing can be said to be estab- 
lished. 

There is a fair concensus of opinion to the effect that 
what we may call climate exerts an important influence. 
In cHmate the two factors recognised as of chief importance 
are temperature and moisture. High temperature com- 
bined with moisture certainly tends to depress the vital 
activity of Europeans and to render them indolent, indis- 
posed to exertion of any kind. On the other hand, high 
temperature combined with dryness of the atmosphere 
seems to have the effect of rendering men but little dis- 
posed to continuous activity, and yet capable ot great 
efforts; it tends to produce a violent spasmodic activity. 
A cold climate seems to dispose towards sustained activity 
and, when combined with much moisture, to a certain 
slowness. 

These effects, which we ourselves experience and which 
we see produced upon other individuals on passing from 
one climate to another, we seem to see impressed upon 
many of the races which have long been subjected to these 
climates ; for example, the slow and lazy Malays have long 
occupied the hottest moistest region of the earth. The 
Arabs and the fiery Sikhs may be held to illustrate the 
effect of dry heat. The Englishman and the Dutchman 
seem to show the effects of a moist cool climate, a certain 
sluggishness embodied with great energy and perseverance. 

In these and other cases, in which the innate tempera- 
ment of a people corresponds to the effects directly induced 



The Race-Making Period 295 

by their climate, it seems natural to suppose that the innate 
temperament has been produced by the transmission and 
accumulation from generation to generation of the direct 
effects of the climate. The assumption is so natural that 
it has been made by almost every writer who has dealt 
with the question. And these instances of conformity of 
the temperament of peoples to the direct effects of climate 
are sometimes offered as being among the most striking 
evidences of the reality of hereditary transmission of ac- 
quired qualities; and the argument is reinforced by in- 
stances of what seem to be similar results produced by 
climate on physical types. Thus, it is said that in North 
America a race characterised by a new specific combination 
of mental and physical qualities is being rapidly formed; 
and it seems to be well established that long slender hands 
are among these features; for in Paris a specially long 
slender glove is made every year in large quantities for the 
American market. Again, we see apparently a change of 
physical type in the white inhabitants of Australia. They 
seem to be becoming taller and more slender ** cornstalks;" 
and this is commonly regarded as the direct effect of 
climate. 

Now, that a new race or subrace with a specific com- 
bination of qualities should be forming in America is 
certainly to be expected from the fact that the intimate 
blending of a nimiber of European stocks has been going 
on for some generations. But what gives special support 
to the assumption that these new qualities are the direct 
effects of climate is that these qualities, the physical 
at least, seem to be approximations to the type of the 
Red Indians, the aboriginal inhabitants. And, it is said, 
this approximation of type can be due only to hered- 
itary accumulation of the direct effects of the climate on 
individuals. 

Another way in which climate has been held to modify 



296 Development of National Character 

racial mental qualities by direct action is through the 
senses, especially the eye. M. Boutmy, in his book on the 
English people makes great play with this principle/ 
He points out that the thick hazy state of the air, so com- 
mon in our islands, renders vague and dull all outHnes and 
colours, so that the eye does not receive that wealth of well- 
defined hues and forms which give so great a charm to 
some more sunny lands, such as the Mediterranean coast 
lands. Hence, he says, the senses become or remain 
relatively dull, and the sense-perceptions slow and rela- 
tively indiscriminating. Such relative deficiency of 
aesthetic variety and richness in the appearance of the 
outer world produces secondarily a further and deeper 
modification of mental type. In the lands where nature 
surrounds man with an endless variety of rich and pleasing 
scenes, he can find sufficient satisfaction in mere contem- 
plation of the outer world; and, when he takes to art 
production, he tends merely to reproduce in more or less 
idealised forms the objects and scenes he finds around him; 
his art tends to be essentially objective. On the other 
hand, in the dull northern climes, man has not ever at 
hand these sources of satisfaction in. the mere contempla- 
tion of the outer world; consequently he is driven back 
upon his own nature, to find his satisfactions in a ceaseless 
activity of mind and body, but chiefiy of the latter. 
Hence, races so situated are characterised by great bodily 
activity and their art and Hterature are essentially sub- 
jective. The thick air, the monotony of vague form and 
colour, drive the mind to reflection upon itself; and in art 
the objects of nature serve merely as symbols by aid of 
which the mind seeks to express its own broodings. "The 
painter paints with the intentions of the poet, the poet 
describes or sings with the motives of the psychologist or 
moralist. All the literattire of imagination of the English 

' Essai d'une Psychologie politique du P£Uple Anglais, Paris, 1903. 



The Race-Making Period 297 

shoWvS us the internal reacting incessantly upon the ex- 
ternal with a singular power of transfiguration and inter- 
pretation."' Hence also poetry is the privilege of a few 
rare spirits and is for them the product of deep reflection, 
not a simple lyrical expression in which all can equally 
share. 

It is certainly true that climate tends to produce these 
effects by its direct action on individuals. Anyone who 
has lived for a time in the southern climes must have noted 
these effects upon himself. But we have no proof that 
the effects of climate are directly inherited. It suffices to • 
suppose that the direct effects are imposed afresh by the 
climate on the minds of each generation. This view is 
borne out by the fact that two races may live for many 
generations in the same climate and yet remain very 
different in temperament in these respects; for example the 
Irish climate is very similar to the English, perhaps even 
more misty and damp; yet the Irish have much more wit 
and liveliness than the English. And in every case in 
which adaptation to physical environment has clearly 
become innate or racial, an explanation can be suggested 
in terms of selection of spontaneous variations, or of 
crossing of races. Thus, the approximation of the Amer- 
ican people to the type of the aboriginals, if it is actual, 
and some observers deny it, may well be due to the small 
infusion of the native blood which has admittedly taken 
place. It may well be that certain qualities of the Red 
Indian, for example, the straight dark hair and prominent 
cheek bones, are what the biologists call * ' dominant char- 
acters" when the Indian is crossed with the European ; that 
is, qualities which always assert themselves in the offspring 
to the exclusion of the corresponding quality of the other 
race involved in the cross. If that is so, a very small 
proportion of Indian blood would suffice to make these 

* Op. cit. p. 20. 



29B Development of National Character 

features very common throughout the population of 
America. As an exception to the supposed law of direct 
hereditary adaptation to climate take the colour of the 
skin. The black negroes live in the hot moist regions of 
Africa, and it has been said that pigmentation is the heredi- 
tary effect of a hot moist climate. But there are men of a 
different race who have long lived in an equally hot and 
moist climate, but who do not show this effect — namely, 
tribes in the heart of Borneo, right under the equator, 
whose skins are hardly darker than the average English 
skins and less dark than the Southern Europeans'. Take 
again the indolence of the peoples of moist hot climates and 
the energy of peoples of colder climates. These certainly 
seem to be racial qualities; but their distribution is ade- 
quately explained by the indirect effect of physical 
environment exerted by way of natural selection; and 
these differences of energy afford the best illustration of 
such indirect action of physical environment in determin- 
ing racial mental qualities. 

Before considering the question further, let us note yet 
another way in which the physical environment affects 
men's minds and has been supposed directly to induce 
certain racial qualities. Buckle pointed out with great 
force the influence on the mind of what he called the ex- 
ternal aspects of nature. He showed that where, as in 
India and the greater part of Asia, the physical features of 
a country are planned upon a very large scale ; where the 
mountains are huge, where rivers are of immense length 
and volume, where plains are of boundless extent, and the 
sun very hot, there the forces of nature are exerted with an 
intensity that renders futile the best efforts of man, at any 
rate of man in a state of low civilisation, to cope with 
them. In such countries men are exposed to calamities on 
an enormous scale, great floods, violent storms and deluges 
of rain, earthquakes, excessive droughts resulting in 



The Race-Making Period 299 

famine and plague; and they are exposed to the attacks of 
many dangerous animal species, which are bred by the 
great heat in the dense and unconquerable forests. These 
disasters have repeatedly occurred on a scale such that in 
comparison with them the recent earthquake in California 
appears a mere trifle. Millions have been destroyed in a 
few hours in some of the floods of the Yellow River of 
China. 

The magnitude of these objects and the appalling and 
irresistible character of such devastating forces produce, 
said Buckle, two principal and closely allied effects upon 
the mind; they stimulate the imagination to run riot in 
extravagant and grotesque fancies; at the same time, they 
discourage any attempt to cope with these great forces and 
to understand their laws, and thus keep men perpetually 
in fearful uncertainty as to their fate; for they cannot hope 
to control it by their own unaided efforts. 

Hence, the encouragement of superstition; hence, the 
dominance of a degrading religion of fear throughout the 
greater part of such regions; hence, the supremacy of 
priests and religious orders and the discouragement of 
scientific reasoning. Hence, in the arts, the literature, 
and the religion of India, we see a dominant tendency to 
the grotesque, the enormous, the fearful ; we see gods por- 
trayed with many arms, with three eyes and terrible vis- 
ages. The legends of their heroes contain monstrous 
details, as that they lived for many thousands or millions 
of years. ''All this," says Buckle, ''is but a part of that 
love of the remote, that straining after the infinite, and 
that indifference to the present, which characterises every 
branch of Indian intellect. Not only in literature, but 
also in religion and in art, this tendency is supreme. To 
subdue the understanding, and indulge the imagination, 
is the universal principle. In the principles of their 
theology, in the character of their gods, and even in the 



300 Development of National Character 

form of their temples, we see how the sublime and threat- 
ening aspects of the external world have filled the mind of 
the people with those images of the grand and the terrible, 
which they strive to reproduce in a visible form, and to 
which they owe the leading peculiarities of their national 
culture."^ 

That these pecuharities of the mental life of such peoples 
are causally related to those terrible aspects of nature is, 
I think sufficiently established by Buckle. But if we ad- 
mit this, there remain two questions: (i) Have these 
tendencies become innate racial qualities? (2) If so, 
how have they been rendered innate? Buckle did not 
raise these questions and offered no opinion in regard to 
them. But he seems to have assumed that these tenden- 
cies have become innate; and there is much to be said for 
that view; Yet, if that could be shown conclusively, it 
still would not prove inheritance of these acquired quaU- 
ties. It may have resulted in some such way as this : the 
physical environment stimulates the imagination, and it 
represses the tendency to control imagination and super- 
stition by reason and calm inquiry after causes; acting 
thus upon successive generations of men, it determines the 
peculiarities of the religious system and of the art and 
literature of the people. Individuals in whom the same 
tendencies are innately strong will then flourish under 
such a system ; whereas those whose innate tendencies are 
in the direction of reason and scepticism will find the sys- 
tem uncongenial, unfavourable for the exercise of their 
best power; they will fail to make their mark; they may, 
as in many instances of European inquirers, actually have 
lost their lives or their liberty through the religious zeal of 
those who maintain the traditional system. Thus the 
social environment, working through long ages, may have 
constantly determined a certain degree of selection of the 

* History of Civilisation, p. 137. 



The Race-Making Period 301 

innate tendencies congenial to it, and a weeding out of the 
opposed tendencies; until the former have predominated 
in the race. ^ 

We have here a very important principle which we must 
constantly bear in mind — namely, that not only the physi- 
cal environment, but also the social environment, may 
determine the survival of those temperaments and qual- 
ities of mind best fitted to thrive in it, and, by handi- 
capping those least fitted to it, may gradually bring the 
mental qualities of the race into conformity with itself. 
We shall later see other examples by which this principle 
is more clearly illustrated. 

We conclude that, while physical environment may act 
powerfully upon the minds of individuals, moulding their 
acquired qualities in the three way^ noticed — namely, 
influencing the mind through bodily habit, through the 
senses, and through the imagination — there is no sufficient 
evidence that the acquired qualities so induced ever be- 
come innate or racial characters by direct transmission. 
In those instances in which the racial qualities approximate 
to these direct effects of physical environment, it may well 
be because the physical environment has brought about 
adaptation of the race by long continued selection of 
individuals, or because it has determined peculiarities of 
social environment, which in turn have brought about 
adaptation of the racial qualities by long continued 
selection. 

' In this connection it must be remembered that in Hindu society the man 
of proved and acknowledged hoHness is permitted and encouraged to pro- 
create a large number of children. 



CHAPTER XVI 
The Race-Making Period (continued) 

WE considered in our last chapter the principal 
modes in which physical environment affects 
the character of a people — namely, (i) influence 
on temperament exerted chiefly through climate acting 
upon the bodily functions : (2) influence through the senses, 
exerting secondary effects upon the higher mental pro- 
cesses : (3) direct influence on the imagination. We con- 
cluded that these effects become innate in some degree; 
though whether they are impressed on the race by direct 
inheritance, or by processes of direct or of social selection, 
or in all three ways, remains an open question. 

We distinguished, besides these direct modes of influ- 
ence, two indirect modes by which physical environment 
affects the minds and character of a people: (i) by its 
selective action on individuals apart from its influence 
upon their minds: (2) by determining occupations and 
social organisation. We may consider them in turn. 

It is recognised, as I pointed out above, that the races 
inhabiting hot moist countries are commonly indolent, 
while those of the moderately cold and moist climates 
tend to be extremely active and energetic. 

This difference is well brought out by Mr. Meredith 
Townsend in an essay on the charm of Asia for the Asi- 
atics'; and he is speaking not of Asia in general but of 
Southern Asia. He says Asiatics "will not, under any 

' Europe and Asia. 



i 



The Race-Making Period 303 

provocation, burden themselves with a sustained habit of 
taking trouble. You might as well ask lazzaroni to 
behave like Prussian officials." After quoting Thiers* 
description of the immense labours of detailed adminis- 
tration which he supported while minister of State, he 
says " No Asiatic will do that. . . . One-half the weak- 
ness of every Oriental government arises from the im- 
possibility of finding men who will act as M. Thiers did.'* 
These races, bred in the tropics, are in fact incurable lotus- 
eaters, their chief desire is for the afternoon life or, as is 
commonly said of the Malays throughout the Eastern 
Archipelago, they are great legswingers, they prefer to 
undertake no labour more arduous than sitting still swing- 
ing their legs. All this, though more or less true of the 
tropical races in general, is pre-eminently true of those 
inhabiting regions which are moist as well as hot, the 
Malays, the Burmese, the Siamese, the Papuans, the 
Negroes of the African jungle regions. 

Such peoples have failed to acquire the energy which 
leads men to delight in activity for its own sake, not merely 
because a hot moist climate inclines directly to indolence, 
but rather because the prime necessities of life are to be 
had almost without labour; the heat dispenses with the 
necessity for clothing and shelter, while the hot sun and the 
moisture provide an abundance of vegetable food in re- 
sponse to a minimum of labour. Hence, no man perishes 
through lack of energy to secure the prime necessities of 
life; and there has been no great weeding out of the in- 
dolent by severe conditions of life, such as alone can pro- 
duce an innately energetic race, one that loves activity for 
its own sake. For the same reason these same peoples 
also exercise but little foresight, they are naturally im- 
provident; the abundance of nature renders it possible to 
survive and propagate without any prudent provision for 
the future. 



304 Development of National Character 

Contrast with these races the northerly. races — in Asia 
the Japanese, whose energy and industry we all recognise, 
and the northern Mongols or Tartars, who have so often 
overrun and conquered with fire and sword the less ener- 
getic peoples of the south, or the Goorkhas or Pathans of 
the highlands of northern India. But more especially 
contrast with them the English people. M. Boutmy 
rightly asserts that ' ' the taste for and the habit of effort 
must be regarded as the most essential attribute, the pro- 
found and spontaneous quahty, of the race."^ It is 
displayed in the English love of sport and adventure and 
travel, especially in such recreations as mountain cHmbing, 
which is pre-eminently an Enghsh sport; also throughout 
our social life, in the intensity of commercial and industrial 
activity, often carried on ardently by men far removed 
from any necessity of making money. In our political 
life, where a vast amount of effort is constantly expended 
in achieving comparatively small results, we always seem 
to prefer to achieve any reform by the methods which 
give scope to and demand the greatest amount of public 
activity and effort. It is shown also in the immense 
amount of public service rendered without remuneration, 
for the mere love of activity and the exercise of power. It 
is very striking in English colonies in tropical lands, and 
has been no doubt an important factor in our success in 
tropical administration and in colonisation. 

Boutmy is inclined to attribute to this love of activity, 
as a secondary effect, the dislike of the mass of English- 
men for generalisations and for theoretical construction; 
for, he says, these are the results naturally achieved by the 
reflective mind, whereas the Enghsh mind gets no time for 
reflection, its attention is perpetually drawn off from 
general principles by its tendency to pursue some im- 
mediate practical end. Hence, he says, abstraction is 

^ Op. cit. 



The Race-Making Period 305 

subordinated to practical ends and does not soar for its 
own sake. This truth is well illustrated by the fact that 
all our English philosophers, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Mill, 
Bentham, Spencer, etc., have been practical moralists, and 
have conducted their investigations always with an eye to 
concrete applications to the conduct of the State or of 
private life. 

Boutmy regards this love of activity, together with 
foresight and self-control, as racial qualities engendered 
by the severity of the climate, working chiefly by way of 
natural selection. In the prehistoric period more espe- 
cially, when man had little knowledge of means of protec- 
tion from climate and hardship such as have been developed 
by civilised societies, those individuals who were deficient 
in these qualities must have succumbed to the rigours of 
the climate, leaving their more energetic fellows to propa- 
gate the race. 

That there is truth in the view is shown by the fact that 
the degree to which the love of activity is developed seems 
to vary roughly with severity of the climate even among 
the closely allied races of Europe. As we pass northward 
from the coast of the Mediterranean, we find the quality 
more and more strongly marked; and it is in accordance 
with this principle that the dominant power, the leader- 
ship in civilisation, has passed gradually northwards in 
the historic period. Civilisation first developed in the 
subtropical regions, in which the abundance of nature first 
gave men leisure to devote themselves to things of the 
mind, to contemplation and inquiry; while the northern 
races were still battling as savages against the inclemency 
of the climate, were still being ruthlessly weeded out by 
the rigorousness of the physical environment, and so were 
being adapted to it, that is to say, were being rendered 
capable of sustained and vigorous effort. But, as the 
means of subduing nature and of protecting himself against 



3o6 Development of National Character 

nature have been developed by man, the dominance has 
passed successively northwards to peoples whose innate 
energy and love of activity were more highly developed in 
proportion to the severity of the selection exerted upon 
many preceding generations. 

The severe climate has not been the only cause of this 
evolution of an energetic active type. No doubt military 
selection played its part also. The Northern races of 
Europe, more particularly the Nordic, the fair-haired 
long-headed race, underwent a prolonged severe process of 
such miHtary group selection, before branches of it settled 
in our island; and, among the qualities which must have 
tended to success and survival in this process, energy and 
capacity for prolonged and frequent effort, especially 
bodily effort, must have been one of the chief. Still, 
even such group selection was probably a secondary result, 
of the direct climatic selection; for it must have been the 
love of activity and enterprise that led these peoples per- 
petually to wander, and so to come into conflicts with one 
another, conflicts in which the more energetic would in^Jj 
the main survive and the less energetic succumb. In part i ' 
also it must have been determined in the third and the 
most indirect manner in which physical environment 
shapes racial qualities — namely, by determining occupa- 
tions and modes of life, and through these the forms of 
social organisation, both of which then react upon the 
racial qualities. 

In illustration of this third mode of action of physical 
conditions, let us take a striking difference of mental 
quality between the French and the English peoples, and 
inquire how the difference has arisen ; a difference which is 
recognised by every capable observer who has compared 
the two peoples and which has been of immense importance 
in shaping the history of the modern world. I mean the 
greater sociability of the French and the greater independ- 



The Race-Making Period 307 

ence of the English, a greater self-reliance and capacity for 
individual initiative. The difference finds expression in 
every aspect of the national life of the two peoples. The 
sociability and sympathetic character of the French, on 
which they justly pride themselves, ^ is the inverse aspect 
of their lack of the characteristic English qualities, inde- 
pendence and self-reliance. In political life the difference 
appears in the centralised organisation of the French 
nation, every detail of administration being controlled by 
the central power through a rigidly organised hierarchy of 
officials, in a way that leaves no scope for initiative and 
independence in local administrations. Connected with 
this is the almost universal desire of educated men to 
become State functionaries, parts of the official machinery 
of administration, and the consequent excessive growth 
of this class of persons. 

The same quality of the French shows itself in the 
tendency to prefer the monarchical rule of any man who 
shows himself capable of ruling, a tendency which con- 
stantly besets the republican State with a well-recognised 
danger. These are not local and temporary manifesta- 
tions, but have characterised the French nation through- 
out the whole period of its existence. In the feudal period 
which preceded its formation, there was considerable local 
independence; but the feudal system was due to the dom- 
inant influence of Frankish chiefs, of the same race as our 
Saxon forefathers, who overran most of France as a ruling 
caste but did not contribute any large element to the 
population, and whose blood therefore has been largely 
swamped. It appears in the greater violence among the 
French people of collective mental processes, those of 
mobs, assemblies, factions, and groups of all kinds. Each 

* Guizot asserted that, even when new ideas and institutions have origi- 
nated elsewhere, it has usually been only by their adoption in France that 
they have been spread through Europe (A History of Civilisation in Europe,) 



308 Development of National Character 

individual is easily carried away by the mass; there are 
none to withstand the wave of contagion and, by so doing, 
to break and check its force. 

In England on the other hand political activity has 
always been characterised by extreme jealousy of the 
central power, and by the tendency to achieve everything 
possible by local action and voluntary private effort. 
All reforms are initiated from the periphery, instead of 
from the centre as in France. Great institutions, the 
universities, schools, colleges, hospitals, railways, canals, 
docks, insurance companies, even water supphes and 
telephones and many other things which, it would seem, 
should naturally and properly be undertaken by the State, 
or other official public body, have been generally set on j 
foot and worked by individuals or private associations of ^ 
individuals. Even vast colonial empires — India, Rho- 
desia, Canada, Sarawak, Nigeria, North Borneo — have 
been in the main acquired through the enterprise and 
efforts of individuals or associations of individuals; the 
State only intervening when the main work has been 
accomplished. j 

In their religion, too, the English are markedly in- I 
dividuahstic; our numerous dissenting bodies have mostly 
dispensed with the centralised official hierarchy which in 
Roman Catholic countries mediates between God and 
man, and have insisted upon a direct communion with 
God; and we have many little churches each of which 
governs itself in absolute independence of every other. In 
the family relations the same difference appears very 
strongly. The French family regards itself, and is re- 
garded by law, as a community which holds its goods in 
common; each child has his legal claim upon his share, 
relies upon his family for support in his struggle with the 
world, and is encouraged by his parents to do so. In the 
English family, on the other hand, the father is a supreme 



The Race-Making Period 309 

despot, who disposes of his property as he wills. The 
children are not encouraged to look for further support, 
when once they become adult, but are taught that they 
must go out into the world to seek their fortunes unaided. 
At an early age, the English boy is usually thrust out of 
the family into the life of a school in which, by his own 
efforts, he must find and keep his position among his 
fellows ; and he lives a life which, compared with that of the 
French boy, is one of freedom and independence. In the 
distribution of the people on the land we see the same 
difference of mental qualities revealed. The French 
peasants are for the most part congregated sociably in 
villages and small towns; the English farmer builds his 
homestead apart upon his own domain. And this deter- 
mines one of the most striking differences in the aspect of 
the rural districts of both countries. In the towns also the 
same tendencies are clearly shown; in the separate little 
homes of the English and in the large houses of the French 
shared by several families. 

It is in the expansion in the world of the two peoples 
that the effects of this difference are most clearly expressed 
and assume the greatest importance. The English race 
has populated a vast proportion of the surface of the world, 
and rules over one fifth of the total population. Whereas 
the French people, who have conquered large areas, have 
never succeeded in permanently colonising any consider- 
able portion of their conquests and they have failed to 
maintain their domination in many regions where they 
have for a time established it. In every extra-European 
region where they have come into conflict with the English 
race they have been worsted. 

The secret of the difference in the expansion of the two 
peoples is the difference of innate mental quality that we 
are considering, enhanced by the differences of custom 
and of poHtical and family organisation engendered by it. 



3IO Development of National Chairacter 

For, like all other innate tendencies, the two to which 
we are referring obtain accentuated expression through 
moulding customs, institutions and social organisation in 
ways which foster in successive generations just those 
tendencies of which these institutions are themselves the 
traditional outcome and expression. Thus, it is the 
individuaHstic nature of the political, religious, and family 
organisation of the EngHsh people which, having been 
engendered by innate independence of character and hav- 
ing in turn accentuated it in each generation, has enabled 
the people to achieve its marvels of colonisation and tropi- 
cal administration. We see these tendencies playing a 
predominant part in the history of every British colony. 

The difference was well brought out by Volney, a 
French observer of the French and English colonists in the 
early days of the settlement of North America. He 
wrote "The French colonist deliberates with his wife upon 
everything that he proposes to do ; often the plans fall to 
the ground through lack of agreement." "To visit one's 
neighbours, to chat with them, is for the French an habit- 
ual need so imperious that on all the frontier of Louisiana 
and Canada you will not find a single French colonist 
estabhshed beyond sight of his neighbour's home." "On 
the other hand, the English colonist, slow and taciturn, 
passes the whole day continuously at work; at breakfast 
he coldly gives his orders to his wife ; . . . and goes forth 
to labour. ... If he finds an opportunity to sell his 
farm at a profit, he does so and goes ten or twenty leagues 
further into the wilderness to make himself a new home." * 

It is the French authors themselves who have most 
insisted upon this mental difference between the French 
and the English, which seems to be determining a great 
difference in the destinies of the two peoples ; and most of 
them while justly valuing the sympathetic and social 

^ I cite these passages after M. Boutmy, op. cit., p. i68. 



'I 



The Race-Making Period 311 

quality of the French mind, deeply regret its lack of the 
English independence. ^ There has been no lack of specu- 
lation and inquiry as to the origin and causes of this su- 
premely important difference. It is perhaps worth while 
to glance at some of these attempts. 

The most superficial attempt at explanation is to say 
that the political and social institutions of the French 
people foster in each individual the social tendencies in 
question, while the English institutions develop their 
opposites. It is true, but it obviously is not the explana- 
tion of the difference; for that we must go further back, in 
order to find the origin of these differences of institution. 

An explanation a little less superficial is that the dom- 
ination of the first Napoleon and the strong centralised 
system of administration established by him accounts for 
the difference. But the permanence, if not the very 
possibility, of that system, and the rise to power of Na- 
poleon himself, were but symptoms of this deep-lying 
tendency of the French mind. 

Buckle, recognising the profound difference which we 
are considering, summed it up in the phrases "the domin- 
ance of the protective spirit in France" and of "the spirit 
of independence in England." He attributed the former 
partly to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in 
France with its centralised authoritative system, partly 
to the long prevalence of the feudal system of social 
organisation, under which every man was made to feel his 
personal dependence upon the despotic power of an inde- 
pendent noble and was accustomed to look to him for all 
initiative and guidance — was trained to obey a despot, 
whose absolute jurisdiction and whose title to his lands 
and rights was unchallenged. The system, he said, cul- 
minated in the despotism of Louis XIV, by the subjection 

' The most frank, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, expression of the 
difference is The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon^ by Ed. Demolins. 



312 Development of National Character 

of the previously independent nobles to the king, and was 
revived in a different form, immediately after the great 
revolution, by Napoleon. 

The dominance of the spirit of independence among the 
English people he would explain also from the character 
of their political institutions during recent centuries. 
After recounting the political history of England from the 
sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and after showing 
how the people during that period repeatedly succeeded in 
asserting its liberties against the encroachments of the 
kings, he wrote — ' ' In England the course of affairs, which 
I have endeavoured to trace since the sixteenth century, 
had diffused among the people a knowledge of their own 
resources and a skill and independence in the use of them, 
imperfect indeed, but still far superior to that possessed by 
any other of the great European countries." But he was 
not wholly satisfied with this explanation; he added — 
"Besides this, other circumstances, which will be here- 
after related, had, as early as the eleventh century, begim 
to affect our national character and had assisted in impart- 
ing to it that sturdy boldness, and at the same time, those 
habits of foresight, and of cautious reserve, to which the 
English mind owes its leading peculiarities." 

When we turn to this account of the primary cause of 
EngHsh independence,^ we find that it was, in his view, 
that the feudal system was established by William the 
Conqueror in a form different from that obtaining on the 
continent. The nobles received their lands directly from 
the king as grants, and all land owners were made to 
acknowledge their direct obligation to him. The nobles 
were in consequence too weak to set up their own power 
against that of the king, and therefore they called the 
people to their aid in resisting the power of the king; hence, 
the people early acquired rights and privileges and the 

^ History of Civilisation in England^ Vol. II, p. 1 14- 



The Race-Making Period 313 

habit of organised resistance to the central authority. 
''The EngHsh aristocracy, being thus forced by their own 
weakness, to rely on the people, it naturally followed that 
the people imbibed that tone of independence and that 
lofty bearing, of which our civil and political institutions 
are the consequence, rather than the cause. It is to this, 
and not to any fanciful peculiarity of race, that we owe the 
sturdy and enterprising spirit for which the inhabitants of 
this island have long been remarkable." 

"The practice of subinfeudation, became in France al- 
most universal." The great lords subgranted parts of 
their lands to lesser lords, and these again to others, and 
so on — "thus forming a long chain of dependence, and, as 
it were, organising submission into a system." In this 
country, on the other hand, the practice was actively 
checked. "The result was that by the fourteenth cen- 
tury the liberties of Englishmen were secured," and the 
spirit of independence had become a part of the national 
character; that is to say. Buckle maintained that three 
centuries of a different form of the feudal system sufficed 
to produce this profound difference between the French 
and English peoples. 

Boutmy also fully recognises the important difference 
between the innate qualities of the French and English; 
and he also would explain it as the effect of political in- 
stitutions since the middle ages, but on lines somewhat 
different from Buckle's — namely, that England was early 
ruled by a king invested with great power, and inclined 
to all the excesses of arbitrary rule. Hence the first need 
of the people was to fortify themselves against his power. 
All the law of England carries the imprint of this fear and 
this defiance. The parliament has been set up against the 
crown, the judges against parliament, and the jury against 
the power of the judges; and so, ever since the conquest, 
individuals have been accustomed to think, and to assert, 



314 Development of National Character 

that their persons, their purse, and their homes are in- 
violable; and that the State is an enemy whose encroach 
ments must be resisted. This way of thinking has by long 
usage become instinctive, increasing from generation to 
generation ; until the horror of servitude has become rooted 
in the Englishman's temperament, and the desire of in- 
dependence has become a native and primary passion. 

Both Buckle and Boutmy agree, then, that the English 
love of liberty is due to England having been conquered 
and ruled by a powerful king, and that in France the 
opposite effect is to be attributed to the same cause — 
namely, the influence of despotic rulers. Surely this is to 
reverse cause and effect. If the English people had not 
already possessed the sturdy spirit of independence when 
they were conquered by the Norman, his strong centralised 
rule would only have rendered them still less independent 
and would have fostered the spirit of protection, as Buckle 
calls it. If the national characters had been reversed in 
this respect, how easy it would have been to show that the 
dependence of the English character was due to the strong 
rule of a foreign despot, William of Normandy, while the 
French independence was due to the existence in feudal 
times of many centres of independent power, the nobles, 
each capable of resisting the central authority! It was 
just because this spirit was theirs already that the English 
people resisted their kings and were able to secure their 
liberties by setting up institutions congenial to their na- 
ture, institutions and customs which have fostered in each 
individual and each generation the spirit of independence 
inherited as a racial quaHty, and which possibly, though 
by no means certainly, have further intensified the racial 
peculiarity. 

Another cause for the difference of institutions is as- 
signed by Sir Henry Maine. He pointed to the great 
influence of Roman law upon French institutions; he 



1 



The Race-Making Period 315 

showed how the French lawyers, brought up in the school 
of Roman law and holding the Roman Empire as the ideal 
of a political organisation, threw all their weight upon the 
side of the monarchy, and in favour of centralised adminis- 
tration. More, perhaps, is due to this influence than to 
the causes assigned by Buckle and Boutmy; but no one of 
these alleged causes, nor all of them combined, can be 
accepted as adequate to explain the origin of the difference 
of national characters. These authors fail also to make 
clear how the political institutions can have modified char- 
acter. Boutmy frankly assumes use-inheritance, which, 
as I have said, is, in the present state of science, an un- 
warrantable assumption. 

That these qualities of the French and English peoples 
are innate racial qualities, evolved during the race-making 
or prehistoric period, is proved not only by the inadequacy 
of any assignable causes operating during the historic 
period, but also by the fact that similar qualities are 
described by the earliest historians as characterising the 
ancestors, or the principal ancestral stocks, of the two 
peoples, when they first appear in history. It is proved 
also by the fact that other branches of the Nordic race 
have displayed similar qualities, more especially the Dutch 
and also the Normans, who, though they have long formed 
part of the French State in the political sense, and have 
suffered most of the political influences assigned as causes 
of the spirit of protection, not only displayed the spirit of 
independence in the highest degree ten centuries ago, but 
are admitted to be still distinguished from the bulk of the 
French people by the greater individualism of their char- 
acter, just as they are still markedly different in physical 
traits. They offer one of the best examples of fixity of the 
physical characters of a race. No one can travel in 
Normandy without being struck by the very marked and 
distinctive physical type, which, according to all accounts, 



3i6 Development of National Character 

is that of the Norman who came over to England with the 
Conqueror; and there is every reason to believe that the 
mental qualities of the race have been equally fixed and 
enduring. 

Julius Cssar, Tacitus, and other early historians have 
described for us the leading qualities of the Gauls on the 
one hand and of the Teutons on the other. Fouillee in his 
Psychology of the French People has brought together the 
evidence of these early historians on the point; it shows 
that the Gauls and the Teutons were distinguished very 
strongly by the same differences which obtain between the 
French and English peoples at the present time, especially 
the difference in respect of independence and initiative, 
the origin of which we are seeking to explain. The Gauls 
were eminently sociable people, sympathetic, emotional, 
demonstrative, vivacious, very given to oratory and dis- 
cussion, vain and moved by the desire of glory, capable of 
great gallantry, but not of persevering effort in face of 
difficulties, easily elated, easily cast down. And, what 
from our point of view is especially important, they were 
readily led by the chiefs, to whom they were attached by 
the bonds of personal loyalty; and they were constantly 
banding themselves together in large groups, under such 
leaders as attained popularity by their superior qualities; 
and, again, they were dominated by the priestly caste, the 
Druids. The Gauls even had those family institutions 
which characterise the modern French and which have 
been held to be the expression of their recently acquired 
qualities and traditions ; namely, the family had the char- 
acter of a community in which the wife had equal rights 
with the husband, and the children were regarded also as 
members of the community having their equal claims upon 
the family property. And society was bound together by 
a system of patrons and clients, a system of personal de- 
pendence. 



The Race-Making Period 317 

On the other hand, the Teutonic people, as described 
by the same ancient authorities, displayed a decided in- 
dividualism in virtue of which their social organisation 
was more rudimentary. The father was supreme in the 
family, and his power and property descended to his eldest 
son. They were a more phlegmatic people, but of great 
energy and persistence. Unlike the Gauls, they were 
dominated by no priestly caste. The religious rites were 
conducted by the elder men. 

The Gauls were a mixed people of whom the minority, 
constituting the nobility, were of the tall, fair, long-headed 
Nordic race, while the majority, the mass of the common 
people, were of the short, dark, round-headed race. And 
these, as the numerous observations of the anthropologists 
show, constitute to-day the bulk of the population, except 
in Normandy and the extreme north-east of France. 

The Teutons or Germans of Cassar and Tacitus, on the 
other hand, were of the fair Nordic race; and the Anglo- 
Saxons who overran Britain, together with the Danes and 
Normans, who, with the Saxons, formed the principal an- 
cestral stock of the English, were of this same Nordic race, 
or Northmen, as we may call them. 

Now, it might seem useless to attempt to arrive at any 
conclusions as to the influences that shaped these races in 
prehistoric times. But an attempt has been made by one 
of the schools of French sociologists, which, in spite of its 
speculative character, seems to be worthy of attention. 
This is the school of "La Science Sociale," founded seventy 
years ago by Fredericq le Play and more recently led by 
Ed. Demolins and H. de Tourville. Aided by a number 
of ardent disciples, they have made a special study of the 
influence of physical environment in determining occupa- 
tions and social organisation, and in moulding indirectly 
through these the mental qualities of peoples. That is 
their great principle. They rightly, I think, insist upon 



31 8 Development of National Character 

the relatively small importance of political institutions in 
moulding a people, regarding them as secondary results of 
the factors which, determining the private activities of 
men and women at every moment of their lives from the 
cradle to the grave, exert a far greater and more intimate 
influence upon their minds. In two fascinating volumes' 
Demolins has summed up the principal results of this 
school and attempted to trace the conditions that have 
determined the differentiation of all the principal races 
of the earth; and de Tourville has applied the same prin- 
ciples and traced their effects in European history. ^ 

It is a curious fact that the work of the Le Play school is 
almost entirely ignored by the other French sociologists 
and anthropologists. It is seldom referred to by them, 
and outside France also it has not received the attention 
it deserves. Much of it is of the nature of brilliant specu- 
lation, and is regarded no doubt as unsound by many more 
sober minds. Yet, when we attempt to understand the 
evolution of man in the prehistoric period, brilliant specu- 
lation becomes a necessary supplement to the work of 
measuring skulls and digging up ruins, to which some less 
ingenious workers confine themselves. And, of all the 
conclusions of the Le Play school, their account of the 
origin of the distinctive characters of the Northmen is one 
of the most striking and satisfactory; while their account 
of the origins of the Gauls and of their peculiar social 
organisation and well-marked mental traits is also among 
their best work. 

^ Comment la route cree le type social, Paris, Didot et Cie. 
^ Histoire de la Formation particulariste, Paris, 



1 



CHAPTER XVII 

The Race-Making Period {continued) 

The Influence of Occupations and of Race-crossing 

IN the foregoing chapter we noticed certain well-marked 
and generally recognised differences of national 
character presented by the French and the English 
peoples — namely, the greater independence of the Eng- 
lish, the greater sociability of the French people; and we 
noted how these differences of national character show 
themselves throughout the institutions of the two nations, 
and how they have played a great part in determining the 
difference of their histories; especially, we saw, how they 
are of prime importance, when we seek to account for the 
greater expansion of the English people throughout the 
world. 

We then noticed several attempts that have been made, 
by Buckle, Boutmy, Maine, and others, to account for these 
differences as results of differences of political institutions 
during the last thousand years. We found that all these 
attempts fail, and that the differences of political institu- 
tions, which these authors have regarded as the causes of 
the differences of national character, are really the ex- 
pressions of a fundamental racial difference; that, in short, 
these authors have inverted the true causal relation. I 
then drew attention to the work of the school of Le Play 
and especially to its fundamental principle — namely, that, 
while peoples are in a state of primitive or lowly culture, 

319 



320 Development of National Cheiracter 

their geographical or physical environment determines 
their occupations and, through their occupations, their 
social organisations, especially their domestic organisation; 
and that particular modes of occupation and of social 
organisation of a primitive people, persisting through 
many generations, mould the innate qualities and form 
the racial character. 

I said that two brilliant workers of the school — namely, 
Demolins and de Tourville — had applied this principle to 
account for those differences between the national char- 
acters of the French and English peoples which we were 
considering. I have now to reproduce their account in as 
condensed a form as possible. 

Demolins claims to show that the short dark round- 
headed people, who formed the bulk of the Gauls and also 
of the population of modern France, came, in prehistoric 
times, from the Eurasian steppe region, reaching France 
by way of the valley of the Danube, a long narrow lowland 
region confined on the north by the Carpathians and 
mountains of Bohemia, on the south by the Balkans and 
Swiss Alps. He supposes that, for long ages, they had 
lived as pastoral nomads on the steppes. By examining 
the nomads who still lead the pastoral life on the steppes, 
he shows the kind of social organisation to which this 
pastoral life inevitably gives rise and under which they 
lived; and he traces the effects which such occupation and 
such social organisation produce on the mental qualities of 
a people. 

The system is the patriarchal system par excellence. It 
is something very different from the Roman system charac- 
terised by the patria potestas, which the writings of Sir H. 
Maine have perhaps tended to confuse with the true 
patriarchal system. The patriarchal system of the pas- 
toral nomads is essentially a communal system, under 
which all the brothers, sons, and grandsons of the patri- 



)1 



The Race-Making Period 321 

arch form, with their famiHes, a community which holds 
all the property, consisting of flocks and herds, in common ; 
each member having his claim to his share of the produce, 
each doing his share of the common labour, and each hav- 
ing a voice in the regulation of the affairs of the family. 
Such a system represses individualism; there is no in- 
dividual property, there are no individual rights, duties, or 
responsibilities; no scope for individual initiative; the 
individual is swallowed up in the community; superior 
energy or enterprise bring no superior rewards, but rather 
tend to social disorganisation and to the detriment of 
the individual who displays them. Further, the work of 
looking after the herds of cattle is easy and delightful, 
calling for no sustained exertion; and the herds provide 
every necessary article of food, clothing, and shelter. Be- 
yond the family group there exists no political organisa- 
tion; for the group is self-supporting and independent, it 
has no need of relations with other groups, and each group 
lives far apart from others, wandering in some ill-defined 
region of the immense plain. 

The peculiarities of this social organisation and of this 
mode of life are clearly created by the physical environ- 
ment, by the boundless grassy plains, which enable each 
family group to maintain a large troupe of cattle, chiefly 
horses. At the same time, these conditions render 
necessary the co-operation of all the members of the family 
in the common work of tending the cattle; while the neces- 
sity of continually moving on to fresh pasture prevents the 
growth of any fixed forms of property and of any more 
elaborate social organisation. 

It is an extremely stable and persistent mode of life 
and of social organisation. So long as the geographical 
conditions remain unchanged, it is difficult to see how any 
change would take place in it, how any progress towards 
civilisation could begin. And, as a matter of fact, the 



322 Development of National Character 

people who have remained in these regions continue to 
lead just the same patriarchal, pastoral, nomadic life. 
Long ages of this mode of life may well put upon a people 
the stamp of sociability and communism and kill out 
individualism and individual initiative ! DemoHns points 
out in a very interesting way how these effects of the 
patriarchal system of the pastoral nomads are displayed 
most clearly still by the population of southern Russia, 
who, of all the settled European peoples descended from 
such pastoral nomads, have suffered fewest disturbing 
influences ; how still the individual is subordinated to the 
community, to the mir, by which all private life and indus- 
trial activity is directed and which is the owner of the 
principal property, namely the land; and how, in conse- 
quence, the people remain devoid of all individual initia- 
tive and enterprise. 

The Celts arriving in Gaul retained these qualities and 
something of the patriarchal organisation, although they 
were no longer simply pastoral nomads ; for, in the course 
of their migrations, they had been forced to take up agri- 
culture and the rearing of other domestic animals, espe- 
cially the pig, through lack of sufficient open steppe land. 
While in this disorganised condition in Gaul, they were 
overrun by tribes of the Nordic race, who established 
themselves as a conquering nobility, superimposing upon 
the rudimentary political organisation of the Celts a loose jj 
miHtary organisation of clans; each clan was led by a 
popular warrior who attached to himself by his personal 
qualities as large as possible a number of clients or clans- 
men, acquiring rights over their land and property, in 
return for the patronage and protection he offered them. 
These nobles with their blood relatives were the tall fair- 
haired Gauls described by Caesar. The Celts lent them- 
selves readily to this system based on personal loyalty and 
leadership, owing to their lack of independence of character 



The Race-Making Period 323 

engendered by long ages of the patriarchal communal 
regime. And the new social organisation fostered and 
developed still more through many generations the spirit 
of dependence, the tendency to look for authoritative 
guidance and control to some recognised centre of power. 

Under the two circumstances, the long regime of patri- 
archal communism and the subsequent prevalence for 
many generations of the clan system, we may see, accord- 
ing to Demolins, the causes of those deep-seated tendencies 
of the French nation (summed up by Buckle in the 
phrase, the spirit of protection) which throughout their 
history have played so large a part in shaping the destinies 
of the people, and which are still the source of grave 
anxiety to many patriotic Frenchmen. 

It is interesting to note that among the Celtic popula- 
tions of the British Isles the same features have been 
clearly displayed. We see among them the clan-system 
with its dual ownership of the soil, which has been perpetu- 
ated in Ireland to the present day and has received more 
formal and legal recognition from the British government 
in its recent legislation. We see the strong clannish spirit 
and relative lack of independence. These qualities are 
clearly shown by the Celtic Irish, even when they have 
been compelled by necessity to emigrate to America. 
There they are not found to be pioneers on the frontiers of 
civilisation, but rather remain herded together in clannish 
communities in the cities of the eastern states, where they 
create such powerful unofficial associations as "Tammany 
Hall." 

Demolins' account of the genesis of the spirit of inde- 
pendence and enterprise of the Anglo-Saxons is still more 
interesting and seductive. He supposes that their an- 
cestors also came originally in very remote times from the 
Eurasian steppes ; but that is a disputable point and forms 
no essential part of his argument. They settled in pre- 



324 Development of National Character 

historic times around the coasts of the Baltic and the 
North Sea, especially in Scandinavia. And the physical 
peculiarities of this region impressed upon their descend- 
ants the qualities which have enabled them to play a lead- 
ing part in the destruction of the Roman power and in the 
development of the civilisation of modem Europe, and 
which have established them in almost every part of the 
world as a dominant race, increasing in power and numbers 
at the expense of other peoples. 

What, then, are these physical conditions? 

Scandinavia is a mass of barren mountains coming down 
in almost all parts abruptly to the sea. Its coast line is 
indented by innumerable fiords and bordered by thou- 
sands of small islands; and the sea which washes these 
coasts is warmed by the Gulf Stream. This sea, owing to 
its warmth and to the existence of a great bank which Hes 
near the surface and runs parallel to the coast line, is ex- 
tremely rich in fish. Hence, the Nordic tribes who settled 
in Scandinavia inevitably became a sea-faring folk, spread- 
ing slowly along the coasts in small boats, supporting 
themselves in large part upon the fish which they caught 
in the sea; for the land is barren, while the sea offers ideal 
conditions for fishing in small boats. But, unlike the 
herds of pastoral peoples, sea-fishing does not provide all 
the necessities of a simple life. It must be combined 
with agriculture. Hence, the ancient Northmen became 
a race of hardy seafarers who at the same time practised 
agriculture. 

The character of the land which was available for the 
necessary but supplementary agriculture was all import- 
ant. It consisted, as it does still, of small isolated strips 
of cultivatable soil at the foot of the mountains where they 
plunge into the sea. On such land it was impossible for 
the family to retain the form of a patriarchal community. 
The fertile areas were too small to support such commu- 



The Race-Making Period 325 

nities, and the individualistic form of family was inevitably 
evolved. On each small plot of cultivatable land a little 
farm was formed, a homestead in which lived a family 
restricted to father, mother, and children. As the children 
grew up, it was impossible to support them on the one 
small farm or to divide it among them ; one son alone was 
chosen as the inheritor of the paternal farm ; and each of 
the others had to seek a new piece of land, build a new 
homestead, and acquire his own boat. 

Thus, the family was forced to become the individualis- 
tic family ; and the home of each such family was necessa- 
rily isolated, widely separated from that of every other, 
owing to the scattered distribution of the little areas of 
fertile soil. Thus were formed the first homes in the 
English sense of the word ; the home in which the father 
rules supreme over his own little household, brooking no 
interference from outside ; the home in which the children 
are brought up to look forward to establishing, each child 
for himself, similar independent individualistic homes. 
Such homes have been established by the Northmen in 
every part of the world in which they have settled; and 
they are peculiar to them and their descendants. 

It is obvious that all the very limited domains of the 
Scandinavian coasts must have been fully occupied in the 
way described in a comparatively few generations after 
the process of settlement began. This seems to have 
occurred about the fourth or fifth century a.d. Then 
the younger sons, for whom there was no place at home 
and for whom there remained no spots suitable for home- 
steads in their native land, were sent out into the world to 
seek their fortunes. They banded themselves together to 
man single boats, or formed fleets of boats; and, leaving 
their parents and women-folk behind, set out to conquer 
for themselves new homesteads. Large numbers, sailing 
to the southern shores of the Baltic and up the Weser and 



326 Development of National Character 



1 



the Elbe, settled on the plains of Saxony; and from this 
new centre they again spread, as the Anglo-Saxons to 
England, and as the Franks to Gaul. Others settled 
directly in northern France and became the Normans. 
Others, the Varegs, penetrated the plains of Russia and 
established themselves as princes over the Slav population. 

This was a migration such as had never before been seen ; 
bands of armed men, all young or in the prime of life, 
coming not as mere robbers, but seeking to conquer for 
themselves and to settle upon whatever land seemed to 
them most desirable. Everywhere they went they con- 
quered and either exterminated or drove out the indige- 
nous population, as in the south and east of England, or 
established themselves as an aristocracy, a ruHng military 
caste, as the Franks in the north-east of Gaul. And 
everywhere they established firmly their individualistic 
social organisation, especially the isolated homestead of 
the individualistic family, characterised by the despotic 
power of the father and by great regard for individual 
property and for the rights of the individual as against all 
State institutions and public powers. In hostile countries 
the homestead became a fortified place, or at least was 
furnished with a fortified keep or castle; and in those 
regions, such as Gaul, in which the indigenous population 
was not exterminated, the feudal system was thus initi- 
ated. Everywhere they carried their spirit of independ- 
ence, enterprise, and initiation. j 

It was the swarming of the young broods of Northmen 
in search of new homes that caused the Romans to describe 
these Northern lands as the womb of peoples, and to re- j 
gard them with wonder and something of fear. 

These qualities and habits continued to be displayed in 
the highest degree by the Normans after their first settle- 
ment in the north of France. The younger sons kept up 
the good old fashion of going out into the world to seek a 



] 



The Race-Making Period 327 

fortune or rather a territory, which often was a dukedom 
or a kingdom. Their most characteristic performance was 
the conquest of the greater part of Italy. A Httle before 
WilHam of Normandy and his companions secured for 
themselves domains in this country, Norman knights, 
engaging in enterprises that might well have seemed ab- 
solutely foolhardy, had established themselves in Mediter- 
ranean lands. Some two thousand Normans, arriving 
Viking fashion in their small ships, conquered Sicily and 
the south of Italy and divided these lands among them- 
selves ; and for a time they introduced order and a settled 
mode of life among the peoples of those parts. The lead- 
ing spirits among them were ten sons of one Norman 
gentleman, Tancrede de Hauteville, the father of twelve 
sons of whom two only remained at home, while each of 
the others carved out for himself a domain in Italy. As 
Demolins remarks, these families, retaining undiminished 
their individualistic tendencies and spirit of independence, 
were veritable factories of men for exportation. 

The modern Frenchman, says Demolins, would regard 
as the height of folly the enterprises of the old Northmen, 
who, mounted on their frail ships, quitted each spring the 
coast of Scandinavia, launched out on the wild sea, landed, 
a mere handful of men, on the coasts of Germany, Britain, 
or Gaul, and there with their swords carved out domains 
and made new homesteads. It was thus that the ances- 
tors of Tancred had acquired the manor of Hautevilk, 
and it was thus that his sons conquered Italy and Sicily. 

It was in a very similar way that, in a later age, men of 
the same breed carried to the new world the same in- 
dividualistic institutions and the same spirit of independ- 
ence, and in doing so, laid the sure foundations of the 
immense vigour and prosperity of the American people. 

There is one almost more striking illustration of the 
great and lasting effects upon character and institutions 



328 Development of National Character 



1 



of the mode of life of the Northmen determined by their 
physical environment. It is furnished by the character 
and habits of the people who still dwell in the plains be- 
tween the mouths and lower parts of the Weser and the 
Elbe, a region which was naturally one of the first to be 
conquered and occupied by the Northmen. This terri- 
tory is an infertile sandy plain, and at the time of the 
coming of the Northmen had but scanty population ; hence, 
instead of becoming the military and ruling caste of a 
subject people, the Northmen became themselves peasants 
and farmers. In doing so, they retained all the charac- 
teristic features of the individualistic family and have per- 
petuated them, together with the spirit of enterprise and 
independence, undiminished to the present day. 

In this region each farm is a freehold which has remained 
in the hands of the same family for long periods, in many 
cases for hundreds of years. Each farm has its isolated 
homestead inhabited by the head of the family, his wife 
and young children, and one or two hired servants. Each 
homestead is well-nigh completely self-supporting and 
lives almost independent of the outside world. In spite 
of the isolation, which might have been expected to en- 
gender an extreme conservatism and backwardness of 
culture, these farmers have continued to exhibit the old 
Northmen's spirit of enterprise and their power of volun- 
tary combination in the pursuit of individual ends. They 
were the first in Europe to establish a society for the scien- 
tific study of agriculture, and they have thus maintained 
themselves in the first rank as cultivators of the land, quite 
without State assistance. In the same way and at an early 
date they estabHshed schools for their children. They 
have continued to produce large f amiHes and have retained 
the custom of handing over the farm and homestead intact 
to one son, chosen for his ability to manage it; while all 
the other sons keep up the old custom of going out into 



The Race -Making Period 329 

the world to seek their fortunes, in the shape of new 
homesteads. 

Most striking of all, they still do this in the old Norse 
fashion as nearly as possible. In one district these farmers 
combined their efforts some sixty years ago and built a 
ship which, since that time, has sailed every year to South 
Africa, carrpng there the surplus sons in search of new 
domains for themselves. In that far country their spirit 
of independence finds satisfaction in establishing new 
homesteads, new families of the individualistic type, and 
in perpetuating their traditions of enterprise and self- 
reliance. 

It is because the modern Scandinavians are of the same 
stock, fashioned for long ages by the same physical en- 
vironment, that they have continued to emigrate in large 
nimibers to North America, where some of their ancestral 
race landed centuries before Columbus was born, and 
where, in the newly opened territories of Canada and the 
United States, they are generally recognised as being 
among the best of the settlers. 

Demolins does not enter into the question — How did the 
institutions and mode of life of these or other peoples, 
determined by physical environment, bring about adapta- 
tion of racial qualities to the environment ? He seems to 
assimie in all cases use-inheritance. But if, as seems 
possible or even probable, this is a false assumption, we 
may still see clearly that, in the case of the Northmen at 
least, adaptation may well have been effected by selection. 
The conditions of life of these Northmen were such that in 
each generation the majority of men could become fathers 
of families only after carrying through successfully an 
enterprise in which a bold independence of spirit was the 
prime condition of success. 

Those who were deficient in the spirit of independence 
must have shrunk from these wild expeditions in search of 



330 Development of National Character 

new homes to be won only by the sword, or must in the 
main have failed to attain the end ; remaining at home, or 
returning there after failing in the enterprise to which 
they proved unequal, to finish their dajrs as bachelor uncles 
at the paternal hearth. This process, carried on for many 
generations, would lead to the evolution of just those 
qualities which are characteristic of their descendants in all 
the many parts of the earth where they now rule. Not 
only must such social selection have been operative during 
the period of settlement of Scandinavia; but each great 
migration to a new area must have sifted out the most 
independent and enterprising spirits to be the founders 
and fathers of the new branch of the race.^ Thus the 
descendants of the pilgrim fathers were the product of 
three such processes of severe selection; the migration 
from Scandinavia to Northern Germany; that from Ger- 
many to England; and that from England to America. 
No wonder that they proved themselves well able to cope 
with the hardships and dangers of a new continent in- 
habited by savages only less fiercely tempered than their 
own stock by many generations of warfare! When we 
thus find the same institutions and the same mental traits 
characterising, from the dawn of history to the present 
time, all the widely separated branches of one racial stock 
and of this stock alone, we realise how powerful over the 
destiny of nations is the influence of racial character 
formed in the long prehistoric ages; we see how futile it 
is to attempt to explain the mental traits of a people by 
the history of their political institutions during a few 
recent centuries; we understand that these institutions are 

^ The reality of selective effect of migration is shown by the stature of 
American immigrants ; those from Scotland are said to be two inches taller 
than the average Scotchman; and De Lapouge shows (Les Selections So- 
ciales, Paris, 1896, p. 367) that a superiority of stature almost as marked, 
may be inferred for the French and German immigrants of America from 
the statistics of the armies of the Civil War. 



The Race-Making Period 331 

the effects, not the causes, of those mental qualities and 
that, even among the peoples who have attained the 
highest degree of civilisation, racial qualities remain of 
supreme importance. 

The Crossing of Races 

Before passing on to the consideration of evolutionary 
changes during the historic period, a few words must be 
said about the crossing and blending of races. Such 
blending has been, no doubt, one of the principal causes of 
the great variety of human types at present existing on the 
earth. It has been going on for long ages in almost all 
regions; but especially in Europe and Africa. All exist- 
ing stocks (with few exceptions) are the products of race- 
blending. No one of the existing European peoples is of 
unmixed stock; every one is the product of successive 
mixtures and blendings of allied stocks; and the mixing 
and blending still goes on; while in America (both north 
and south) the greatest experiments in race-blending that 
the world has yet seen are taking place before our eyes. 

Authors differ widely as to the results of the crossing of 
human races and subraces. Some assert that the effect of 
crossing of races is always bad, that the crossbred progeny 
is always inferior to the parent stocks. They make no 
allowance for unfavourable conditions, especially the lack 
of the strong moral traditions of old organised societies. 
Others maintain the opposite opinion. Both opinions are 
probably correct in a certain sense. I think the facts 
enable us to make with some confidence the following 
generalisation. The crossing of the most widely different 
stocks, stocks belonging to any two of the four main races 
of man, produces an inferior race; but the crossing of 
stocks belonging to the same principal race, and especially 
the crossing of closely allied stocks, generally produces a 



332 Development of National Character 

blended subrace superior to the mean of the two parental 

stocks, or at least not inferior. 

This generalisation cannot yet be based on exact and 
firmly established data, unfortunately; but it is in har- 
mony with old established popular beliefs, and with what 
we know of the crossing of animal breeds; and it is borne 
out by a general inspection of many examples. For in- 
stance, the blending of the white, negro, and American 
stocks, which has been going on in South America for 
some centuries, seem to have resulted in a subrace which 
up to the present time is inferior to the parent races ; or at 
any rate to the white race. So the mulattoes of North 
America and the West Indies, although superior in some 
respects to the pure negroes, seem deficient in vitality and 
fertility, and the race does not maintain itself. The 
Eurasians of India are commonly said to be a compara- 
tively feeble people. The blend of the Caucasian with the 
yellow race is also generally of a poor type. Examples 
abound in Java of people of mixed Javanese and Dutch 
blood; and they are for the most part feeble specimens of 
humanity. It is generally recognised that a recently 
blended stock may produce a few individuals of excep- 
tional vigour and capacity and physical beauty. But 
setting these aside, the blended stock seems to be inferior 
in two respects: (i) a general lack of vigour, which ex- 
presses itself in lack of power of resistance to many dis- 
eases and in relative infertility; so that the blended stock 
can hardly maintain its numbers; (2) a lack of harmony of 
qualities, both mental and physical. It may be that such 
lack of harmony is the ground of the relative infertiUty of 
blended stocks. It expresses itself in the inharmonious 
combination of physical features, characteristic of the 
mongrel. The negro race has a beauty of its own, which 
is spoilt by blending. 

As regards mental constitution, although v/e cannot di- 



The Race-Making Period 333 

rectly observe and measure these disharmonies of com- 
position, there seems good reason to believe that they 
exist. The soul of the crossbred is, it would seem, apt to 
be the scene of perpetual conflict of inharmonious tenden- 
cies. This has been the theme of many stories, and, 
though no doubt many of them are overdrawn, there is no 
reason to doubt that they in the main depict actual ex- 
perience or are founded on close observation. 

It is on the moral, rather than the intellectual, side of 
the mind that the disharmony seems to make itself felt 
most strongly; and the moral detachment of the crossbred 
from the moral traditions of both the parent stocks is 
possibly due in part to a certain lack of innate compati- 
bility with those traditions, as well as to social ostracism; 
the crossbred can assimilate neither tradition so easily 
and completely as the pure-bred stocks. 

It is possible, though this is a still more speculative view, 
that the same is true of the intellectual constitution of the 
mind. 

The superiority of subraces formed by the blending o± 
allied stocks seems to fall principally under two heads: 
(i) a general vigour of constitution; (2) a greater variety 
and variability of innate mental qualities. The greater 
variability of qualities of a subrace renders that race more 
adaptable to changing conditions ; for racial adaptability 
depends upon the occurrence of abundant spontaneous 
variations. A large variety of innate qualities renders a 
race capable of progressing rapidly in civilisation; it 
renders it more capable both of producing novel ideas and 
of appreciating and assimilating the ideas, discoveries, 
and institutions of other peoples ; and such imitative as- 
similation from one people to another has been a main 
condition of the progress of culture. 

It is, of course, well recognised that the great centres of 
development of culture have been the places where differ- 



334 Development of NationaJ Character 

ent peoples have come most freely into contact, notably 
the centre of the old world where Asia, Africa, and Europe 
meet together. This was the area in which the three 
great races of Europe came first into contact and mingled 
freely. Some authors attribute the fertilising influence 
upon culture wholly to the blending or contact of cultures ; 
but there is good reason to beHeve that it is largely due 
also to race-blending. 

We might compare in this respect the three great cul- 
ture areas of the old world — Europe, India and China. 
The Chinese afford an instance of one relatively pure race 
occupying a very large area. In spite of its early start 
and great mental capacities, its culture has stagnated. 
The stock was perhaps too pure. India on the other hand 
seems to owe its peculiar history largely to the fact that its 
population in almost all parts has been made up from very 
widely different races — white, yellow and black; the 
heterogeneity has been too great for stability and con- 
tinued progress. In Europe different branches and sub- 
branches of the white race, that is of stocks not too widely 
different in constitution, have undergone repeated crossing 
and recrossing. 

It is worth while to point out that, if our generalisation 
is valid, it follows that race-blending has been an import- 
ant factor in the progress of civilisation. And the gen- 
eralisation has also an important bearing upon one of the 
most urgent problems confronting the statesmen of the 
world at the present time, and not only the statesmen but 
all the citizens of the civilised states, especially the citizens 
of the British Empire and of America. For it justifies 
abundantly the refusal of the white inhabitants of various 
countries to admit immigrants of the yellow or negro race 
to settle among them; and it justifies, and more than 
justifies, the objection to intermarriage with those other 
races which Englishmen have upheld wherever they 



il 



The Race-Making Period 335 

have settled, and which most other peoples have not 
upheld. ' 

In all the currents of heated discussion as to the rights 
and wrongs of the treatment of other races, this question 
of the kind of subrace which will result from intermarriage 
is generally left in the background ; whereas its importance 
is far greater than that of all other considerations taken 
together. Some, like Sir S. Olivier,^ are content to ap- 
prove race-blending on the ground that it improves the 
inferior race. But the racial qualities of the leading 
peoples of the world are too precious to be squandered in 
the process of improving in some uncertain degree the 
quality of the overwhelming mass of humanity of inferior 
stocks ; the process would probably result in the total de- 
struction of all that humanity has striven and suffered for 
in its nobler efforts. 

It is an interesting question — When two races or sub- 
races are crossed, do they ever produce a homogeneous and 
true subrace, exhibiting a true and stable blend of the 
qualities of the parental stocks ? Or does the blend always 
remain imperfect, with many individuals in whom the 
qualities of one or other of the parental stocks predomi- 
nate? The answer seems to be that a stable subrace may 
be formed in this way, though usually not until free inter- 
marriage has gone on for many generations. According 
to the most recent doctrine of heredity, the Mendelian, 
every human being is a mosaic or patchwork of unit quali- 

^ A. Reibmayer {Inzucht u. Vermischung beim Menschen, Leipzig, 1897) 
insists upon the importance of isolation and consequent inbreeding for the 
formation of superior strains and subraces. He points out that the geo- 
graphical barriers of Europe have favoured in this way the production of 
distinctive national types. Like Stewart Chamberlain, Flinders Petrie, 
and others, he regards the dark ages of Europe as a period of chaos directly 
due to the overcoming of these geographical barriers and the consequent 
prevalence of crossbreeding on a large scale. 

* White Capital and coloured Labour. 



336 Development of National Character 

ties, organs, or capacities, each of which is inherited wholly 
from one of the parents and not at all from the other. If 
this view is well founded, it follows that there can be no 
true blending of these unit qualities. But still the mosaic 
may be so finely grained and the unit qualities derived 
from the two parents so closely interwoven, that each 
individual may present an intimate mixture of the parental 
qualities, may represent for all practical purposes a blend- 
ing of the two stocks. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
Racial Cheuiges During the Historic Period 

WE have found reason to believe that national char- 
acter, as expressed in the collective mental life 
of any people, is only to be understood and ex- 
plained when we take into account the native or racial 
mental qualities of the people; and we have seen reason to 
think that these racial qualities were in the main formed 
in the prehistoric or race-making period; we have noted 
some of the principal attempts to throw light on the pre- 
historic moulding of races. But these racial qualities, 
although very persistent, are not unalterable. We must, 
therefore, consider whether, and in what ways, the racial 
mental qualities of a people may have been changed during 
the nation-making or historic period. What are the 
factors which determine such changes? What is their 
influence on the destiny of nations? 

The most diverse opinions are still held in regard to the 
question of the extent and nature of changes of innate 
mental qualities of peoples during the historic period, the 
period during which a people, or a branch of a people, 
attains political unity and becomes a nation. 

There is no doubt that the moulding power of physical 
environment tends to become greatly diminished during 
this more settled period of the life of a people, and that, 
in so far as changes take place, they are determined prin- 
cipally by racial substitutions and by social selections 
within a people, rather than by the mere struggle for 
22 337 



338 Development of National Character 



survival of individuals or of family groups against the 
inclemency of nature or against other individuals and 
groups. 

The former of these two modes of change, substitution, 
has undoubtedly been effected on a large scale, producing 
in certain instances radical changes in the racial quality 
of the populations of some countries; that is to say, 
there has been more or less gradual substitution of one 
race for another, while the nation as a geographical 
and political entity, with its language and much of its 
laws, institutions, and customs, lives on without com- 
plete breach of continuity, and the people, although 
by blood radically changed, continues to regard itself 
as the same people, accepting as its own the traditions 
of those predecessors whom they mistakenly regard as 
their ancestors. 

Perhaps the most striking and complete change of this 
sort in European history was the change of racial character 
of the Greek people. It is now pretty well established 
that the Greek population of the classical age was an in- 
complete blend of two of the three great European stocks, 
namely Homo EuropcBus, the Northern, fair, long-headed 
type of tall stature, and of H. Mediterraneus, the short 
dark long-headed type of the Mediterranean coast lands. 
The Pelasgians, who, as we now know, had achieved a 
civilisation of a type that was widely spread through 
southern Europe as long as three thousand years or more | 
before our era, seem to have been of this Mediterranean i 
race. :| 

Rather more than a thousand years before our era, the 
Pelasgian population of Greece and the neighbouring 
regions began to be overrun and conquered by tribes of the 
fair Northern race which came in successive invasions, the 
Thracians, the Hellenes, the Achaeans, the lonians, and - 
later the Dorians. Just as, at a later period, men of the , 



1 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 339 

Northern race established themselves as a military aristo- 
cracy over the Celtic peoples of western Europe, so these 
invading tribes established themselves as a military 
aristocracy over the populations of Mediterranean race; 
and, as in the former case, so here, they intermarried 
largely with the people they conquered and formed an 
imperfectly blended population, in the upper social strata 
of which the fair type was predominant, in the lower strata 
the dark type. 

From this happy blending of two races was formed the 
people which, under the favourable geographical and social 
conditions of that time and place, evolved the civilisation 
that culminated after six hundred years in the Athenian 
culture of the time of Pericles. And then, after a very 
short time, the whole of that splendid civilisation faded 
away, and the Greek people sank to a position of slight 
importance from which it has never again risen. After 
having displayed in several departments of the intellectual 
life a power and originality such as have never been 
approached by any other people, they became a people of 
very mediocre capacities, devoid of power of origination 
and purely imitative. 

That this profound change in the mental qualities of the 
population of Greece was due to substitution of one racial 
stock by an inferior one is beyond question. That a great 
change of racial type was effected is sufficiently proved by 
the comparison of the physical type of the modem with 
that of the ancient Greeks. The modem are predomi- 
nantly dark and round-headed ; the ancient were distinctly 
long-headed, as shown by a sufficient number of skull 
measurements; and they were, as regards the dominant 
class at least, predominantly fair in colour. It has been 
supposed that the many references to the fair hair and 
complexion of heroes and gods were due to fair persons 
being very rare and hence an object of special admiration ; 



340 Development of National Character 

but there is no ground for this. The way in which this 
racial substitution took place is also pretty clear ; and the 
rapid, almost sudden, decline of the intellectual produc- 
tivity of the Greek people coincided in time with the racial 
change. 

The first and most important factor in the extermination 
of the best blood of ancient Greece was military selection. 
Military group selection in the prehistoric period had, no 
doubt, played a great part in bringing about the evolution 
of the superior mental qualities of the European peoples, 
especially of the fair Northern race. So long as the peoples 
consisted of more or less wandering tribes of pure race, 
which waged a war of extermination upon one another, 
the peoples and tribes of superior mental and moral en- 
dowments must in the main have survived, while those of 
inferior endowments went under. But, so soon as the 
Nordic tribes became settled as aristocracies ruling over 
the Pelasgian populations, the effects of military selection 
tended to be reversed; instead of making for racial im- 
provement, they made for deterioration. That racial 
deterioration occurs under these conditions seems to be an 
almost general law; it has been exemplified among many 
different peoples. The many small Greek states were 
almost perpetually at war with one another; and the result 
of the warfare was not so much the wholesale extermina- 
tion of the people of any one state, as the killing off in 
large numbers of the younger men of the ruling caste, the 
free citizens of whom the armies were almost entirely 
composed. 

The wars between Sparta and Athens were the most 
destructive and tragic of all in this respect. We know 
that the numbers of Spartans of the aristocratic class, 
never very large, became fewer and fewer, in spite of 
efforts made to keep up the number by admitting to 
citizenship persons not of pure Spartan blood; and that 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 341 

Sparta was eventually destroyed simply for lack of men, 
men of the ruling class. ^ 

In Athens and other states the depleting agencies were 
more numerous. Frequent wars played the same parts 
as in Sparta; and the number of free men was further 
diminished by the repeated founding of colonies, in which 
a relatively small number of persons of Greek blood be- 
came swallowed up in a large population of mixed and 
inferior origin. In some states, in Athens especially, the 
political conditions worked powerfully in the same direc- 
tion. Prominent citizens were perpetually exiled or com- 
demned to death, sometimes in considerable batches. It 
is said that at certain times two thirds of the citizens of 
certain states were living in exile ; and the exiles, going to 
the colonies or other foreign lands, were for the most part 
lost to the Greek people. 

Then, with the blooming period of Greek intellect, came 
the loss of the ancient religious beliefs, beliefs which had 
strengthened the family and made each man anxious to 
have many sons that the rites might be duly performed for 
the repose of his shade. Coinciding with this was the 
great increase of luxury which made large families too 
expensive, save for the most wealthy; while at the same 
time the abundance of slave labour kept down the rate of 
remuneration of all handicrafts, and so condemned the 
class of free Greek artisans to a state bordering on poverty. 
Hence, the free citizens of pure blood, already largely 
reduced in numbers, ceased to multiply; and the number of 
citizens was sustained only by the admission to citizenship 
of foreigners, freed slaves, and various elements of different 
and inferior racial origins. 

Hence, at the time that the battle of Chersonese was 

^ Aristotle says "want of men was the ruin of Sparta." Fathers of three 
sons were exempted from military service, and of four sons from all State 
burdens. 



342 Development of National Character 

fought and the Macedonians attained the supremacy, the 
Greek citizens were no longer the same racial aristocracy 
which had produced the finest flowers of Greek culture. 
But the work of substitution was still only partially ac- 
complished. In the time of the Roman domination of 
Greece, the remnants of the true Greek aristocracy were 
removed by the slave trade. Tens of thousands of Greeks 
of all classes were brought together to the slave markets; 
while those men of talent who escaped that fate emigrated 
to Rome to seek their fortunes by teaching the Greek 
language and art and philosophy. Later still came the 
Goths, who sacked the towns and destroyed or drove out 
the inhabitants. Then followed successive invasions 
of Slavs from the north; and lastly, the domination 
of the Turk well-nigh completed the extinction of the old 
aristocracy. 

The modern Greek people is descended largely from Slav 
invaders and largely from the ntimerous and prolific 
slave population of the great age of Greece, but hardly at 
all from the men who made the greatness of that age. 

Though the change and deterioration of the racial men- 
tal qualities of the Greek people by racial substitution is 
the most striking example in history, it is by no means the 
only one. ^ 

The substitution in that case was largely by elements 
drawn from other regions and peoples. But a similar 
substitution and consequent change of innate mental 
qualities may go on slowly within any people which has 
been formed, as have almost all the present European na- 
tions, by an incomplete blending of two or more racial 
stocks; it may be effected by internal selection without 

^ Several writers have pointed out the importance of these facts and at 
least one professional historian has insisted strongly upon them, namely 
O. Seeck in his Geschichte des Unter gangs der antiken Welt, Berlin, 19 10,' 
vol. i. 



I 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 343 

any introduction of new elements from any other region. 
Before considering an example of the process, let us note 
certain facts which show that there may well have taken 
place, throughout the historic period, changes of the 
composition of peoples by internal substitution or changes 
of the mental constitution by internal selections — that is 
to say, by the more rapid multiplication of certain mental 
t3^es and the relative infertility of other types. Consider 
first the striking fact that the populations of the various 
European countries seem for the most part to have re- 
mained almost stationary as regards numbers, or even in 
some cases to have diminished greatly in numbers, 
throughout the period between the Roman domination and 
the later part of the eighteenth century. The population 
of Spain is said to have decHned from forty millions under 
the Roman rule to only six millions in the year 1700 a.d. 
The population of Great Britain is said to have increased 
from five millions to six millions only during the seven- 
teenth century; and it is certain that in the main it had 
increased at an even slower rate, or not at all, in the pre- 
ceding centuries since the Norman Conquest; whereas in 
the nineteenth century it increased from thirteen millions 
to nearly forty millions; that is to say, it trebled itself in 
the century ; and even that rate of increase is considerably 
less than the possible maximal rate. 

The same is roughly true for most of the European 
countries; their populations, throughout great stretches of 
the historic period, remained stationary or increased only 
very slowly. Now when, during any period, a population 
does not multiply at the maximal physiological rate, 
changes of its character may well be taking place; for, in 
proportion as the rate of increase falls below the maximal, 
there is a lack of fertility in the population or in some part 
of it; if this relative infertility affects equally all parts and 
classes of the population, it will produce no change of its 



344 Development of National Character 

composition ; but if it is selective, if for any reason it affects 
one class, or persons of some one kind of temperament or 
mental type, more than others, then this class or this 
temperament or this form of ability tends rapidly to dimin- 
ish and to disappear from among that people. 

The causes of the relative infertility may be divided into 
two classes: (i) those which operate by killing persons be- 
fore they have completed their middle life; (2) those which 
restrict fertility without killing. Both may be selective 
in their action. The former kind is alone operative in 
determining evolution in the animal world and probably 
also among the less civilised peoples; but, as civilisation 
advances, the causes of infertility of the other kind increase 
constantly in effectiveness, while the former operate with 
less and less intensity. It is through the causes which 
diminish fertility merely, rather than exterminate in- 
dividuals that changes of racial quahty of nations are now 
being, and in the future will be, principally determined. 
Selection of this kind is usually distinguished from the 
various modes of natural selection which work by exter- 
mination, by thenam.e "reproductive selection." Briefly, 
natiiral selection operates by means of selective death 
rate, reproductive selection by means of selective birth 
rate. 

No doubt, disease, especially in the form of plagues and 
epidemics, was one of the principal causes of the slowness 
of increase of population throughout the Middle Ages. 
And this was probably non-selective as regards mental 
qualities, although it was strongly selective as regards 
power of resistance to disease, and has left the European 
peoples more resistant to most diseases than any other 
peoples, save perhaps the Chinese. ^ 

» On this topic cp. Dr. Archdall Reid's The Present Evolution of Man and 
his Principles of Heredity, in which books the effects of selection by disease 
and by alcohol are vividly set out. 



I 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 345 

But many other causes of selection were at work. Dis- 
ease presumably has not affected mental qualities by selec- 
tion ; although by direct action and mental discouragement 
it may have tended to the decay of civilisations; it has 
been argued, for example, that malaria played a great part 
in the decay of classical antiquity, that it was introduced 
some centuries B.C. and enfeebled the population of Greece 
and Italy. 

More interesting, from our point of view, of the influences 
affecting the mental constitution of populations, is the 
effect of alcohol. Dr. Archdall Reid has argued very 
forcibly that resistance to the attraction of alcohol is a 
mental peculiarity which a race acquires only through long 
exposure to the influence of abundant alcohol ; that popu- 
lations are resistant just in proportion to their past expo- 
sure to it — as is true in the main of epidemic and endemic 
diseases — and that in both cases this is due to selection. ^ 

Much careful painstaking work by continental anthro- 
pologists seems to have proved that a change of racial 
composition through internal selection has been and still 
is going on in both the German and French people. The 
facts have been worked out by O. Ammon,'' Hensen, and 
De Lapouge. ^ They show, chiefly by means of the com- 
parison of the forms of large numbers of skulls, that 
throughout the historic period the French and German 
peoples have been becoming more and more round-headed, 
that the type of Homo Alpinus, the short dark round- 
headed race, has been gaining upon the type of Homo 
EuropcBUS. 

» Op. cit. 

' O. Ammon, Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre naturlichen Grundlagen, Jena, 
1900. 

3 De Lapouge, Les Selections Sociales; cf. also W. Alexis, Ahhandlungen 
zur Theorie der Bevolkerungs- und Moralstatistik, Jena, 1903, and W. Schall- 
mayer's Vererbung und Auslese in ihrer soziologischen und politischen Be- 
deutung, Jena, 1910. 



346 Development of National Character 

We have seen that the latter stock of the fair northern 
type constituted the upper class among the Gauls of 
Caesar's time ; and the invasions of Franks and Normans 
must have added considerably to their numbers; yet, in 
spite of that, the mental and physical characters of this 
race are said by these authors to be now very much rarer 
than formerly, owing to the internal selections which have 
favoured the Alpine type. These took the following 
forms. In the first place, in the early Middle Ages, it is 
said, the Nordic type, being a military aristocracy, suffered, 
as in ancient Greece, proportionally far greater losses in 
warfare than the Alpine type. Secondly, the severe per- 
secutions of Protestants in France drove into exile, be- 
sides killing many others, large numbers who were for the 
most part of the fair race, because, as we have seen, this 
race does not easily remain content within the Roman 
Church. It is said, for example, that, after the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes, so large a number of Protestants 
passed into Prussia that the rise of Prussia as a powerful 
State was the immediate consequence, with of course an 
equivalent loss to France. De Lapouge considers this 
the greatest blow that France has suffered in the historic 
period. Normandy alone, it is reported, sent 200,000 
Protestants to Prussia. But the most important and 
curious factor has been, according to De Lapouge, what he 
calls the selection by towns. He shows, by comparison of 
masses of anthropological observations, that the Nordic 
type has been predominantly attracted to the towns 
(which fact he attributes to their more restless enterprising 
character) while the dark type has been more content to 
lead the quiet agricultural life. ^ He points out that the 
town-life stimulates to a new struggle for adaptation, from 
which differentiation of classes results; the long-heads 
maintain their numbers better and rise in the social scale. 

^ Amnion's Law. 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 347 

Further, he shows that town-Hfe makes against fertiHty, 
owing to a number of psychological influences — the stimu- 
lation of ambition and of the intellect, the luxurious habits, 
the weakening of family life, the break with the past and 
its family traditions, the uncertainty of the future, the 
weakening of religious sanctions; and he gives reason to 
believe that in this way the towns have been, through 
many generations, weeding out the elements of the fair 
race and determining an ever increasing predominance of 
Homo Alpinus. 

In order to understand the importance of these internal 
selections, it is necessary to realise that their effects are 
cumulative in a high degree, when the same influences 
continue to work through many generations. Thus, if 
within any people there are two equally numerous classes 
of persons of different mental constitution, A and B, and 
if these constitutions determine that the one group A has 
a net birth rate of three children per pair of adults, while 
the other B has a birth rate of four per pair of parents; 
then, in the third generation after one century, the num- 
bers of the two classes, other things being the same for 
both, will be as ten to sixteen. After two centuries the 
one class will be more than twice as numerous as the other ; 
and after three centuries the numbers of the class A will 
constitute about fifteen per cent, only of the whole popu- 
lation. Late marriage is also very important. Suppose 
that of two classes, A marries at 35, and B a,t25 years, and 
that each produces four children per marriage ; then (other 
things being the same) after three and a half centuries B 
becomes four times as numerous as A . These two factors 
generally work together. 

But, apart from the change of racial composition of a 
heterogeneous nation by internal selection of this sort, 
changes of the constitution of even a racially homogeneous 
people may be produced through selection affecting per- 



348 Development of National Character 

sons of particular mental tendencies. One of the most 
striking instances of this is the elimination of the religious 
tendencies from the constitution of a people by negative 
selection through the action of the Roman Church. ^ For 
many centuries the Roman Church has attracted to her 
service very large numbers of those who were by nature 
most religiously minded, and it has imposed celibacy upon 
them, it has forbidden them to transmit their natural 
piety to descendants. In Protestant countries this pro- 
cess of negative selection of the religious tendencies was 
continued for a much briefer period than in the Catholic 
countries. It is maintained with much plausibility that 
we may see the result in the fact that sincere and natural 
piety is far commoner in the Protestant countries than in 
the Roman Catholic; that in the two countries Italy and 
Spain, in which the influence of the Roman Church has 
been greater than in any others, the people are now the 
least religiously minded of any in Europe ; that with them 
religion has become purely formal and external, that the 
mass of the people, though outwardly conforming, is 
absolutely irreligious; that in fact this form of religion 
tends to exterminate itself in the long run by insisting 
upon that form of reproductive selection.^ 

Another striking instance of the incidence of negative 
selection upon certain mental qualities of a people is af- 
forded by the history of Spain. In the sixteenth century 
Spain attained to a supreme position of power and grand- 
eur among the nations of the world, such as has been 
rivalled by Rome alone in all history; and then very 
rapidly her power decayed, and ever since she has remained 

^ Pointed out by Francis Galton and Fouillee. 

^ On the other hand it tends (partly no doubt by deliberate design) to 
spread itself by insisting upon the duty of procreation. This effect is said 
to be very considerable in French Canada and only to be partially counter- 
acted by a very high rate of infantile mortality. 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 349 

one of the most backward of European peoples, contribut- 
ing little to European culture, to science, art or philosophy, 
incapable of developing without the aid of foreigners her 
rich industrial resoirrces, impotent in war, entirely devoid 
of enterprise and originality. To what is this great 
change due? 

It is not due to any adverse change of climate, to devas- 
tation by war or plague or famine, nor is it due to any 
change in geographical or economic relations. Spain 
remains more happily situated as a centre of commerce 
than any other country of the world. The mass of the 
people remains vigorous, proud, and virile. It is the 
intellect of the nation alone which has decayed, or rather 
it is the intellectual life of the nation that has become 
utterly stagnant. 

Buckle drew a vivid picture of the stagnation of the 
Spanish intellect and sought the explanation of it in the 
great power wielded by the Roman Catholic Church, 
which, he said, had successfully fostered the spirit of 
protection and superstition, had discouraged every effort 
of the intellect, and utterly repressed the spirit of inquiry, 
to the free activity of which all progress of civiHsation was, 
in his opinion, due. Here, again, modern science shows 
that Buckle was led into error by his ignorance of the 
importance of the biological factors, the racial qualities 
and the changes produced in them by selection. 

Galton and, still more fully, Fouillee have shown that 
the stagnation of the intellect of the Spanish people and 
the consequent decay of the power and glory of Spain have 
been chiefly due to the fact that the people of Spain ceased 
to produce those men of exceptional mental endowments, 
of intellectual energy and enterprise and independence 
of character, on whom primarily depend the power and 
prosperity of any nation and who are the most essential 
factors in the progress of the civilisation of any people, who 



350 Development of National Character 

in short are essential for the growth and endurance of 
national mind and character. And this was because dur- 
ing some centuries intellectual power, enterprise, and 
energy were steadily weeded out by a rigorous process of 
negative selection. In the first place, the Church, having 
attained enormous power, became in two ways a tremen- 
dous agency of negative selection. First, she made celibate 
priests of a very large proportion of all those whose 
natural bent was towards the things of the mind, multiply- 
ing monastic orders excessively. Secondly, by means of 
the Inquisition she destroyed with fire and sword or 
drove into exile through many generations all those who 
would not conform to her narrow creed, who combined 
intellectual power with independence and originality of 
spirit and a firm will. In addition she drove out all the 
Jews and all of Moorish origin. 

The second mode of negative selection, namely persecu- 
tion exerted by the Chin-ch, was no doubt the more import- 
ant, but the former also must have had a great effect. We 
are helped to realise the probable magnitude of the effect 
by reflection on facts set out in an article by Bishop 
Welldon.^ He shows the great part played in EngHsh 
civilisation since the Reformation by the sons of the English 
Clergy; including as they did a nimiber of men of the 
highest achievements in all departments of our national 
life. If all those sons of clergy who have shown excep- 
tional abilities, and all their descendants, had by the rule 
of cehbacy been prevented from coming into existence, how 
disastrous would that have been for the Enghsh people, 
how much less successful and vigorous would the nation | 
have become ! 

A second powerful agency of negative selection was 
the immense colonial empire which Spain so rapidly ac- 
quired, especially her American conquests. The people 

» The Nineteenth Century for April, 1906. 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 351 

were seized with the desire to enrich themselves with the 
gold of the New World, and were fascinated by the idea of 
imitating the romantic adventures of Cortes and Pizarro. 
Great numbers of the bolder and most capable spirits set 
out for the New World, and there either lost their lives 
or remained to mix their blood with that of the native 
Indians or the imported negroes. In either case their 
stock was lost to the mother country. 

The third and culminating cause was the career of 
military aggression pursued by Charles V; this completed 
the extermination of the aristocracy of ability and finally 
plunged Spain into an intellectual torpor which has per- 
sisted ever since and from which she can be raised up only 
by a succession of men of first-rate intellect and char- 
acter : men such as she seems incapable of producing, be- 
cause her people has thus been drained of all its most 
valuable elements, because her eugenic stocks have been 
exterminated. 

The fall of Spain illustrates not only the operation of 
internal social selection affecting certain mental qualities; 
it illustrates also once more, even more clearly than the 
fall of Greece, the fact that the civilisation of a people and 
its power and position in the world depend altogether upon 
its intellectual aristocracy, and that the fall of a people 
from a high place necessarily follows the failure to con- 
tinue to produce such an aristocracy. 

In the civilised nations of the modern world, the most 
important kind of selection at work at the present time is 
what is distinguished as ''economic selection" working in 
conjunction with the formation of the social classes. It 
has no doubt operated at various times among other 
civilised peoples, but never so strongly and universally 
as at present. 

All the leading civilised nations have passed, in the 
eighteenth and earlier part of the nineteenth centuries, 



352 Development of National Character 






through a period in which the discoveries of science have 
enormously increased the productive powers of man and I 
man's control over, and power of resistance to, the forces' 
of nature. The result has been that everywhere civilised 
populations have multiplied at a great rate, in a way that 
has never before occurred. But now this period seems to 
have definitely come to an end, and to have been suc- 
ceeded by a new period characterised by three features 
which threaten to exert a most deleterious effect upon the 
innate mental qualities of peoples. 

(i) The world is becoming filled up; the untouched 
wealth of enormous territories no longer lies open to the 
grasp of the bold and enterprising. The coloured races 
are entering into the economic competition, in the way 
foreshadowed by the late C. H. Pearson. ' The high or- 
ganisation of every form of economic activity renders the 
competition for wealth ever^here extremely severe 
And at the same time men have come to regard as necessi- 
ties of life what, but a few generations ago, were the luxu- 
ries of the wealthy or unknown even to them ; that is to say, 
the standard of comfort has risen greatly. The combined 
result of these changes is the increased difficulty of main- 
taining a family in the upper strata of society. 

(2) There has been a great development of humanitarian 
sentiment, one result of which has been the breaking down 
of class-barriers and the perfecting of the social ladder; 
at the same time it has produced such changes of our laws 
and institutions as tend in an ever increasing degree to 
lighten the economic burdens of the poor and to consum- 
mate by social organisation the abolition of natural selec- 
tion; that is to say, these changes are putting a stop to 
the repression by natural laws of the multiplication of the 
less fit, those least well endowed mentally and physically. 

» In National Life and Character, a pessimistic though intellectually 
stimulating book. 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 353 

The recent great decline of infant mortality is one evidence 
of this. 

(3) The influence of religion and custom has weakened, 
and men are more disposed to adopt the naturalistic point 
of view, to believe that this life is not a mere preparation 
for an infinitely longer life elsewhere, but that it is all they 
can certainly reckon upon and, therefore, is to be made the 
most of; while at the same time they are oppressed by 
the severity of the economic competition and by a sense 
of the lack of any ultimate purpose, end, or sanction of 
human effort. 

The combined resulc of these three changes is a strong 
tendency to reverse the operation by which nature has 
secured the evolution of higher types of mind — namely, by 
breeding in the main from the higher types in each genera- 
tion. We see a tendency for the population to be renewed 
in each generation preponderantly from the mentally in- 
ferior elements, those whose outlook hardly extends be- 
yond the immediate future and who have not learnt to 
demand for themselves and their children favoured posi- 
tions in the great game of life. The effects of these three 
changes operate in the following manner. The rate of 
reproduction,, the birth rate, of nearly all civilised coun- 
tries is falling rapidly (although the death rate also falls). 
This diminution of rate of reproduction is due to increase 
of celibacy, abstention from marriage, to increase of late 
marriage, and to voluntary restriction of the number of the 
family in marriage. 

Now, it is shown statistically that this falling off of 
fertility chiefly affects the classes above the average of 
ability, the upper and middle classes and also the superior 
part of the artisan classes.^ These classes have been 
formed and are maintained by the operation of social and 

' Provident Societies, by Sidney Webb, and The London Population, by 
D. Heron. 

23 



354 Development of National Character 

economic competition ; they have long been, and are still, 
perpetually recruited in each generation from the lower 
strata, by the rise into them of the abler members of the 
lower strata. Hence, economic selection, under our pre- 
sent social system, seems to be working strongly for the 
mental deterioration of the most highly civilised peoples; 
the social ladder, becoming more nearly perfect, perpetu- 
ally drains the mass of a people of its best members, 
enabling them to rise to the upper strata where they tend 
to become infertile. ^ Gal ton and Prof. Karl Pearson have 
insisted most strongly upon these tendencies. But they 
have not escaped the notice of continental authors. M. 
Jacobi'' has written a large volume packed with historical 
illustrations to prove inductively the law that aristocracies 
always die out, or are only maintained by constant re- 
cruiting from below, or in other words that aristocracies 
tend to become infertile. And the modem tendency which 
we have just now considered under the head of economic 
selection may be regarded as falling under the head of this 
law, a case of the extension of the law to democratic 
communities and the natural aristocracies of ability 
which are generated in them. 

We may perhaps state the principal causes of this 
tendency in general terms as follows : the acquirement by 
any class of leisure, culture, and the habit of reflection 
(the malady of thought) partially emancipates that class 



^ It must be recognised also that in Great Britain emigration has, during 
the last three centuries, tended in all probability in the same direction as the 
various forms of social selection — namely, to the deterioration of the home 
population ; for in all ages it is the bold and enterprising persons who seek 
new homes in far countries, leaving the weakly, the timid, the dull, and the 
defective behind in the mother country. Even the convicts that we ex- 
ported at one time to our colonies were probably persons of more than 
average capacity, though some of them may have been innately defective 
in moral disposition. 

» Etudes sur la selection chez Vhomme, Paris, 1904. 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 355 

from the empire of instinct, custom, and the reUgious 
sanctions of moraHty ; and these are the great conservative 
agencies under the influence of which men not so emanci- 
pated continue to multiply according to the law of nature. 
These instincts, customs, and religious sanctions of moral- 
ity, which lead men to multiply freely, have been ac- 
quired for the good of the race or of the society considered 
as an organism whose life is of indefinitely long duration ; 
and in some respects they are opposed to the pleasure and 
welfare of the individual life. The habit of reason and 
reflection tends to lead men to act for their own immediate 
welfare, rather than for the future welfare of the race or of 
society, and to refuse to make those sacrifices of ease and 
to undertake those responsibilities and efforts which the 
care of a family imposes and which alone can secure the 
welfare of the future generations. It is in respect to these 
duties that the great antagonism between religion and 
reason appears in its most significant aspect. 

The tendency for the upper classes to die out and to be 
replaced constantly from the lower social strata by the aid 
of the social ladder is no doubt stronger now than in fore- 
going ages. But it has always been operative; and this is 
widely recognised; while the comfortable inference has 
often been drawn that the process is not only inevitable 
but actually beneficial and desirable. It is said that the 
upper classes inevitably become effete, and that the lower 
constitute an inexhaustible reservoir of mental and moral 
excellences, from which they are, and can be, indefinitely 
renewed; and thus the population is always rising in the 
social scale, a state of affairs which makes for social 
happiness. 

But, if we take a longer view, the prospect is not so 
comforting; it seems only too probable that this constant 
dying away of society at the top and the renewal of the 
upper strata from the lower, by the agency of the social 



356 Development of National Character 

ladder, must sooner or later result in a serious deterioration 
of the lower strata, at least in draining it of its best stocks. 
There is also a return or downward current of less strength 
which returns to the lower strata the failures, the incom- 
petents, and the degenerates of the upper. And these 
two currents must, it would seem, in the course of ages 
render it impossible for the lower strata to continue to 
supply the superior elements required to maintain the 
upper. If and when that stage is reached, national decay 
must set in. 

In England, where the operation of the social ladder has 
been more effective and of longer duration than in any 
other country, there are indications that this stage is at 
hand. Our social ladder has provided and still provides 
a splendid array of talent, but already it has produced, as 
its complement, a large mass of very inefficient population. 
Foreign observers are constantly impressed with this; 
Mr. Price Collier,^ for example, tells us that the million 
best of our population is the finest in the world; but that 
our lowest stratum is the most degraded and hopelessly 
inefficient. 

Looking at the course of history widely, we may see, 
then, in the differentiation of social classes by the social 
ladder, and in the tendency of the upper strata to fail to 
reproduce themselves, an explanation of the cyclic course 
of civilisation. This has been ascribed by some authors^ 
to race-crossing, followed by blending, and ultimately by 
stagnation consequent upon complete blending and the 
flowering period which coincides with it. But we now 
have a more adequate explanation of the decay which 
follows upon the blooming period. It is not mere stagna- 
tion, resulting from the achievement of social harmony and 
the relaxation of efforts at social adaptation and achieve- 

* England and the English. 

» Notably by Prof. Flinders Petrie in his Revolutions of Civilisation, 






Racial Changes During the Historic Period 357 

ment of all kinds. The decline is probably due as much, 
and perhaps in a much higher degree, to the exhaustion of 
the mass of the population, the completion of the draining 
process by which, throughout the whole period of the 
development of the cycle of civilisation, the best elements 
and strains have been drained off from the lower strata, 
brought to the top, and strained off. 

It is interesting to speculate on the possible effect on 
this process of the fact that we are becoming more clearly 
conscious of these tendencies and subjecting them to 
scientific inquiry. Already the legislature has taken one 
small step of a eugenic nature and is soon to take another. 
The important thing is that we should recognise that men 
are not the helpless sport of blind forces, that mankind can 
control its own destiny in ever increasing degree as know- 
ledge grows. 

A word may be said in regard to sexual selection, which 
probably played a part in the evolution of the mental 
capacities of men. It would seem that, in the peoples 
among whom monogamy is the rule, it no longer operates 
to any appreciable degree. With the general excess of 
females, we could suppose that it still tended to race im- 
provement only if the unmarried women were on the whole 
distinctly inferior to the married. But, if there is any 
difference, it is probably the other way; because the most 
able women are more and more attracted into independ- 
ent careers. The further the so-called emancipation of 
women goes, the more will this be the case. 

Civilisation, then, tends from the first to put an end to 
that elimination of the less fit individuals by the severities 
of Nature which we call natural selection ; and, as soon as 
it has passed beyond its earliest stages, it brings to an end 
also the mortal conflicts of social groups and the conse- 
quent group selection, which was in all probability a main 
factor of racial progress in the prehistoric period. It 



358 Development of National Character 

abolishes also at an early stage the improving influence of | 
sexual selection, which was probably the third principal con- 
dition of the development of the higher powers of mankind. 

Civilisation replaces these modes of selection, which 
make for improvement of the racial qualities of peoples, 
by a number of modes of social selection, nearly all of 
which must have been, so far as we can see, negative or 
reversed selections — that is, selections making for deteri- 
oration of the. mental qualities of the civiHsed peoples. 
In place of natural selection, group selection, and sexual 
selection, we have had at work, within each people in 
increasing degrees, various forms of social selection — 
military selection, selection by the towns, selection by the 
church, political selection with its exiles and its colonial 
system, and lastly economic selection, which has become 
exceedingly influential in recent years among ourselves. 
And all these, so far as can be seen, have operated mainly, 
among some peoples and in some ages very powerfully, 
to diminish the fertility of the best elements of the popula- 
tion and so to produce actual retrogression of the average 
intellectual capacity of peoples, and especially to deprive 
them of eugenic stocks, the stocks which were most fertile 
in individuals of exceptional capacity on whom the pro- 
gress of civilisation and the relative power of nations 
chiefly depend. 

M. de Lapouge's investigations of the matter have led 
him to a very melancholy conclusion. He attaches special 
importance to urban selection, as he calls it, in weeding out 
the best stocks. He writes — ' 'There is no more agonising 
question than that of the exhaustion of our intellectual 
reserves by the influence of city -life. The pubHc and our 
statesmen do not suspect it. But nevertheless it is the 
great danger of modem societies and especially of France. 
Of all the devastating influences which we have called 
social selections, selection by the town makes most 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 359 

powerfully for deterioration of peoples. Our towns are 
destroying all of the intelligent and energetic that have 
been spared us by the long centuries of disastrous selec- 
tions. France has lost in the past almost all her dolicho- 
blond elements, and now are disappearing those of mixed 
stock and the best of the short -headed type. In all the 
continent of Europe the hour is at hand when there will 
remain only the inert and used up debris of our dead na- 
tions, pitiable remnants who will be the prey of unknown 
conquerors. Thus perished the Hellenic world, thus will 
perish the whole of our civilisation, if man does not make 
application of his knowledge of the principles of heredity, 
that tremendous power which to-day is bringing death and 
stagnation, but by the control of which science will enable 
us to secure safety and national vigour."^ 

It is possible that this conclusion gives too dark a pic- 
ture of the tendencies of social selection in the civilised 
nations; but it does seem probable that with the advance 
of civilisation the tendency to reversed selection becomes 
strong. ^ We are at any rate compelled to conclude that 
it is impossible to discover evidence of any influences that 
can have made at all strongly for progressive evolution of 
intellectual capacity during the historic period; whereas 
a number of forms of selection seem to have worked against 
it and must at least have counterbalanced any factors 
making for improvement, and that therefore no advance 
has taken place in intellectual capacity but more probably 
some deterioration has already occurred. 

^ Op. cit., p. 407. 

* De Lapouge does not stand alone in this opinion. Many biologists 
and leaders of thought have expressed it hardly less strongly, though not all 
of them have attached so much importance to the influence of the towns. 
It has been expressed in general terms by Dr. and Mrs. Whetham (in the 
Hibbert Journalior Oct., 191 1), by Dean Inge in a number of forcible articles, 
by Mr. W. Bateson in his *' Herbert Spencer Lecture" for 1912, and by other 
writers in a number of articles in the Eugenics Review and other journals. 



360 Development of National Character 



I 



The conclusion thus reached deductively is well borne 
out by the small amount of inductive evidence that is 
available. Such comparison as we can make between the 
leading modern nations and the civilised nations of an- 
tiquity tends rather to show that both as regards the 
average man, and as regards the intellectual endowment of 
exceptional men and the proportion of such men produced, 
the advantage lies with the ancient peoples. And the 
comparison of skull capacity or size of brain decidedly 
supports this, conclusion. It has been found by a number 
of anthropologists that the average skull capacity of men 
of the late Stone Age in Europe was equal to, or greater 
than, that of modern Europeans. And in the main, on 
the large average, intellectual capacity varies with the 
size of the brain. 

Our seeming intellectual superiority is a superiority of 
the traditional store of intellectual gains, a superiority 
of knowledge and of the instruments of the intellect, of 
language, and of the methods of mental operation by which 
knowledge is obtained, especially the mathematical and 
scientific methods in general. ^ Consider a single example 
frequently quoted to show the intellectual inferiority of 
the modern savage. It is said — Here is a poor savage who 
cannot count above ten without the help of his fingers and 
toes or other tallies ; and we generally forget that we also 
should be incapable of counting above ten, had not our 
ancestors slowly devised the system of enumeration or 
verbal counting, and that, given such a system, the poor 
savage would be able to count as well as any of us. 



^ This conclusion may perhaps be said to be now generally accepted by 
those who have given any thought to the matter. A. R. Wallace argued 
strongly in this sense; the late Benjamin Kidd set out the evidence im- 
pressively in his Social Evolution, Chapter IX; and it is implied by all the 
many writers who, as we have noted, agree in regarding the processes of 
selection in the civilised nations as in the main reversed or detrimental. 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 361 

The reader may be prepared to accept this conclusion as 
regards the intellectual capacities of mankind, and yet 
may be inclined to say — Surely the civilised peoples have 
progressed as regards their moral qualities throughout the 
historic period! Let us, therefore, consider this point 
separately for a moment. 

Is there reason to believe that there has been progress 
of the innate moral disposition during the historic period ? 
Here we are on still more difficult ground than when we 
considered the question of the progress of innate intellec- 
tual capacity. 

The essence of the higher morality is the predominance 
of the altruistic motives over the egoistic, in the deliber- 
ately reasoned control of conduct. But morality in this 
sense is relatively rare in every age, and the great mass of 
moral conduct of men in general is the issue of mental 
processes of a simpler kind ; it consists in doing what one 
believes to be right, in acting according to what one 
believes to be one's duty; no matter how that belief may 
have been arrived at. The tendency to do what one 
believes to be right, which for the vast majority of men 
has always been simply the tendency to conform to the 
code of morals accepted by his society, has an innate basis 
which may properly be called the social or moral disposi- 
tion. At present I am not concerned to define the ele- 
ments of our nature which make up the moral disposition. ' 
The morality of a people, objectively considered, is the 
outcome of the interaction between their moral disposition, 
on the one hand, and the moral environment of the in- 
dividuals, on the other; and the latter consists of two 
parts : (i) the traditional system of precepts, customs, laws, 
in short the code; (2) the traditional system of sanctions 
by which the code is upheld and enforced. 

If we compare, in respect to this moral nature, the 

* I refer the reader to my Social Psychology. 



362 Development of National Character 

members of primitive societies with those of highly 
civiHsed societies, applying simply the criterion of con- 
formity of conduct to the accepted code, we shall be im- 
pelled to the conclusion that the former, the savages and 
barbarians, have in general the moral nature much more 
highly developed than the members of civiHsed societies; 
for they conform on the whole very much more strictly 
to their moral codes. But such a conclusion would be 
hardly fair to the civilised peoples; first, because their 
social environment is more complex, so that the bearing of 
their moral code is less simple and direct; it is less easily 
obeyed, because its teachings are more generaHsed in form 
and do not provide clear irresistible rulings for all or any 
large proportion of the much greater variety of situations 
with which individuals find themselves confronted. Sec- 
ondly, because the code is a higher one and makes greater 
demands upon the self-control of individuals. Thirdly, 
because not only is the code less clear and direct, but also 
the sanctions of conduct, civil and religious, are generally 
less obvious and immediate; and the effectiveness of both 
code and sanctions is weakened by the co-existence, within 
complex civiHsed societies, of more or less rival codes and 
systems of sanctions, which inevitably weaken the author- 
ity of one another; whereas the code and sanctions of the 
savage or barbarous society reign absolutely and without 
rivalry, so that men are not led to question their authority. 

The conditions of moral conduct are, then, so different 
as to forbid any attempt to compare the innate moral dis- 
positions of primitive and civiHsed peoples ; and all we can 
do, in order to arrive at an opinion, is to consider whether 
the conditions have been such as to favour the evolution 
of the moral disposition, the innate basis of the social 
tendencies, during the nation-making period. 

There can, I think, be no doubt that the principal con- 
dition of the evolution of the moral nature was group selec- 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 363 

tion among primitive societies constantly at war with one 
another. In conflicts of that kind it must have been the 
solidarity of each group, resting upon the moral disposi- 
tions of individuals, the tendency of each individual to 
conform to the law and moral code of the society and to 
stand loyally by his leaders and comrades, which, more 
than anything else, determined success and survival in the 
struggle of the group for existence. At first, the nature of 
the code must have been of relatively small importance; 
the all-important condition of survival of the group must 
have been the strict obedience to it on the part of the 
members of the group. 

This is not a deduction only from general principles. 
One may observe the effect of tribal conflict, on comparing, 
in various parts of the world, tribes that have long been 
subjected to its influence with closely allied tribes that 
have long led a peaceful existence.^ 

At a later stage, as the traditional codes of morality 
became differentiated and more complex with the increas- 
ing complexity of societies, the nature of these codes must 
have acquired an increasing influence in determining 
group survival ; but it must still have been subordinate in 
importance to the degree of development of the moral 
disposition; for a society with an inferior moral code, 
strictly conformed to by its members, would in the long 
run have better chances of survival than one with a higher 
code less strictly observed. Hence, the higher more 
difficult codes could only be attained by those peoples 
among whom the instinctive basis of social conduct had 
become highly evolved by a long process of group selection. 

But, on passing into the stage of settled societies of large 
extent, that is to say, as peoples passed from the stage of 
tribal organisation to that of national organisation, the 

^ In this connection I may again refer to The Pagan Tribes of Borneo ^ by 
C. Hose and W. MacDougall. 



364 Development of National Character 



4 

•tal| 



evolution of the social disposition through the mortal 
conflict of groups must have tended to come to an end; 
because group selection became less active, the conflicts 
between the larger and less numerous societies or groups 
became rarer and also less fatal to the vanquished societies. 
In other words, during the historic period failure in con- 
flict has not usually meant extermination; national cul- 
tures and the power and glory of nations have come and 
gone, but the various peoples, the units of conflict, have in 
the main survived their failures and persisted in living. 
Group selection, the main condition of evolution of the 
social disposition, has, therefore, been abolished ; and of the 
various forms of social selection operating within societies, 
the chief of which we have briefly noticed, no one seems to 
have been of a nature to produce further evolution of the 
social disposition; all of them must rather have operated 
adversely to it. Military selection, selection by the 
Church's rule of celibacy, political selection — all these 
must have fallen most heavily on the individuals in whom 
the social disposition was strong, whose conduct was in- 
fluenced largely by the sense of duty, and less by the 
individual impulses and desires. 

We may conclude, then, with some confidence that there 
has not been further evolution of the innate moral disposi- 
tion in the historic period. This conclusion is greatly at 
variance with popular conceptions; we are apt to pride 
ourselves upon our superior morality; to point to our 
humanitarian laws and institutions, to our tenderness for 
the weak, the poor, and the suffering; to our regard even 
for the welfare of savage peoples, whom we no longer 
deliberately exterminate, and for domestic animals; and 
to suppose that all this shows modern civilised men to be 
innately superior in morality to their ancestors and to the 
barbarous peoples. But our conclusion that the difference 
implies merely an evolution of moral tradition, not of 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 365 

moral nature, will appear probable if we reflect upon the 
fact that a widespread change of this kind in respect to 
some department of conduct has sometimes been produced 
within a very short space of time, even within the lifetime 
of one generation. Take the attitude of Englishmen to- 
wards slavery and the African slave trade. It is hardly 
more than half a century since large numbers of English- 
men, or men of English origin, owned great gangs of slaves 
or drew their wealth from slave labour; yet now most of 
us look with horror upon slavery of every kind. Take the 
case of kindness to domestic animals. It is a compara- 
tively recent tradition; and, within the memories of those 
who are not yet middle-aged, a great improvement has 
taken place. Again, there are many persons who, while 
tender to their domestic animals, are entirely brutal where 
wild animals are concerned, since public opinion or tradi- 
tional morality does not yet bear so strongly upon our 
relations to them. Again, it is not long since in our fac- 
tories, our prisons, our schools, the most horrible tortures 
were applied to our fellow citizens without provoking any 
protest ; while now we display perhaps an excessive tender- 
ness and have passed law after law to protect the feeble 
against the strong. 

The mental development of peoples in the historic period 
has, therefore, not consisted in, nor been caused by, nor in 
all probability has it been accompanied by, any appreci- 
able evolution of innate intellectual or moral capacities 
beyond the degrees achieved in the race-making period, 
before the modem nations began to take shape. There is 
no reason to think that we are intellectually or morally 
superior by nature to our savage ancestors. Such superi- 
ority of morals and intellectual power as we enjoy has 
resulted from the improvement and extension of the intel- 
lectual and moral traditions and the accompanying evolu- 
tion of social organisation. 



366 Development of National Character 

A different conclusion was reached by the late Benja- 
min Kidd in his Social Evolution, which has enjoyed a very 
wide circulation, ^ and it seems worth while therefore to 
examine very briefly the author's position. Mr. ICidd saw 
clearly and argued convincingly that the innate intellectual 
capacities have not improved during the historic period; 
but he held that the innate moral tendencies have been 
greatly improved during this period; or rather he distin- 
guished between the innate moral tendencies and the 
innate religious tendencies; and, while rejecting Herbert 
Spencer's view that the moral tendencies (as thus arbi- 
trarily distinguished from the reHgious tendencies) 
are slowly becoming improved and strengthened in the 
civilised peoples, he held that the innate reHgious tenden- 
cies are being greatly improved and strengthened ; and he 
regarded this as the underlying condition of all ''social 
evolution." In support of his view he cited an impressive 
array of facts illustrating the general softening of manners 
and morals among the civilised peoples, especially the 
legislative changes which have given poHtical power to the 
masses of the people. That these evidences of a general 
softening of manners and a great extension of social sym- 
pathy are very striking we must all agree; but Kidd ad- 
vanced no serious argument in favour of his contention 
that these changes have been due to some change or im- 
provement of the innate qualities of the peoples among 
whom they have appeared. And he did not suggest any 
way in which this alleged improvement or accentuation of 
the innate religious tendencies may have been brought 
about. He attributed it wholly to the influence of the 
Christian religion. Now, if Kidd had accepted the 
Lamarckian principle of the transmission of acquired 
tendencies or effects of use and habit, he might reasonably 

^ It has been translated into nine languages and was reprinted ten times 
in the first year after its publication. 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 367 

have attributed the alleged improvement to such influence. 
But he sternly rejected that principle and proclaimed him- 
self a rigid exponent of the Neo-Darwinian school, which 
attributes all racial changes to selection. He even as- 
sumed the truth of the doctrine that, in the absence of 
selective processes making for its improvement, every race 
must inevitably degenerate. It might, then, have been 
expected that he would have attempted to show how 
Christianity can be supposed to have favoured the im- 
provement by selection of the innate religious tendencies. 
Yet he made no attempt in this direction. He seems to 
have been aware that his view encounters a great difficulty 
in the fact that Christianity powerfully swayed the peoples 
of Europe for many centuries during which little or no 
progress in civilisation was effected, whereas rapid and 
accelerating progress of many kinds has marked the last 
three centuries. He sought to meet this difficulty by 
attributing the rapid progress of recent centuries to the 
influence of the Protestant form of Christianity, alleging 
that it promotes the evolution of the religious tendencies 
more powerfully than other forms. Yet this view of the 
matter, even if it were acceptable, would leave the Re- 
formation itself quite unexplained. Kidd seems to hint 
that, throughout the earlier centuries of the dominance of 
the Christian religion in Europe, it was slowly effecting 
the alleged improvement of the religious tendencies in the 
mass of the people, without these being able to manifest 
themselves in social life, until they somehow broke loose 
at the time of the Reformation and began for the first 
time to operate on a great scale and with tremendous force. 
The view might have some plausibility coming from the 
mouth of a disciple of Lamarck, but it cannot be reconciled 
with Kidd's strictly Neo-Darwinian principles. There is, 
then, nothing in Kidd's grandiloquent and loosely reasoned 
but always interesting pages, to justify any belief in the 



368 Development of National Character 

improvement of the innate moral disposition during the 
historic period. ^ 

Before leaving this difficult question of the extent and 
nature of changes in the innate qualities of peoples during 
the historic period, I would define in the following way the 
position that seems to me to be well founded. There have 
been no considerable changes of innate qualities ; and what 
changes have occurred have probably been of the nature 
of retrogression, rather than of advance or improvement; 
and this is true of both intellectual and moral quahties. 
The improvements of civilised peoples are wholly improve- 
ments of the intellectual and moral traditions. All the 
great and obvious changes of social life are in the main 
changes of these traditions. Nevertheless, such differ- 
ences of innate quahties as exist between the different 
peoples are very important, because of their ctmiulative 
influence upon their traditions. And, especially, the 

^Shortly before his death Mr. Kidd pubHshed (in the year 191 8) his 
Science of Power. In this book he showed a complete change of face on the 
question of the importance of innate quahties. He denied all importance^ 
to changes of innate qualities, whether for better or worse, because, as he 
maintained, "the social heredity transmitted through social culture is 
infinitely more important to a people than any heredity inborn in the 
individual thereof " (p. 273) ; and he made in this book a violent and scorn- 
ful attack upon the late Francis Galton and upon all who follow him in 
beheving that the decay or improvement of the racial quahties of a people 
are of importance for its prosperity and development, and who, therefore, \ 
approve of Galton's effort to found a science of Eugenics. Kidd did not I 
anywhere in his last book acknowledge that he had made this very great j 
change of principle, which completely undermines the whole argument | 
of his Social Evolution, but complacently suggested that, as Newton and j 
Darwin are regarded as the fathers of modem physical and biological science j 
respectively, so in the future Kidd will be regarded as having foimded anew 
in his Social Evolution the science of society. On reading the Science of 
Power after having written this chapter, I was amazed at this assumption 
on behalf of a book whose most fundamental doctrine the author had himself 
renounced, and I turned again to the earlier work to verify my brief sum- 
mary of its argument. I confess that it is not easy to make sure of what the 
author was driving at. But I find that Kidd, in discussing the influence 



Racial Changes During the Historic Period 369 

innate superiorities of the leading peoples, though rela- 
tively small, are of essential significance; and it is of the 
first importance for the future prosperity of the great 
nations of the present time that they should not suffer 
any deterioration of their innate qualities; for they alone 
have attained just such a level of innate excellence as 
renders possible the existence of civilisation and the growth 
and continued progress of great nations. Especially is it 
essential that they should continue to produce in large 
numbers those persons of exceptional moral and intellec- 
tual endowments, whose influence alone can maintain the 
vitality of the national traditions and who alone can add 
anything of value to them. 

of religious systems, wrote (on p. 307) : "Natural selection seems, in short, 
to be steadily evolving in the race that type of character upon which these 
forces act most readily and efficiently; that is to say, it is evolving religious 
character in the first instance, and intellectual character only as a secondary 
product in association with it." On the following page I find — "The race 
would, in fact, appear to be growing more and more religious," and "a 
preponderating element in the type of character which the evolutionary 
forces at work in human society are slowly developing, would appear to be 
the sense of reverence." And there are many other passages which, in 
spite of the habitual lack of precision of Kidd's language, can only be inter- 
preted to mean that the improvement of moral or religious character, on 
which he so strongly insists as a feature of recent centuries, involves and 
depends upon improvement of innate qualities in the mass of the people. 

^4 



CHAPTER XIX 
The Progress of Nations in their Youth 

WE have found reason to believe that during the 
historic period the peoples of Europe have made 
no progress in innate qualities, moral or intel- 
lectual; yet that period has been characterised by im- 
mense mental development, a development essentially of 
the collective mind. The most striking result of the 
formation of nations and the development of civilisation 
has been this replacement of the progress of the individual 
mind by the progress of the collective national mind. And 
the most interesting and important problem of group 
psychology is — What are the conditions of the progressive 
development of the collective mind? 

I insist that this is distinctly and primarily a psycholog- 
ical problem. The conclusion we have just reached, to the 
effect that it is not produced by and does not imply a 
racial evolution, shows that it is not to be regarded as a 
biological problem. It cannot be treated as a problem of 
economics or of politics; these sciences only touch its 
fringe at special points. 

We have before us the significant fact that in some cases 
the collective mind of a nation has remained stationary at 
a rudimentary stage of development for long ages; while 
in other nations the collective mind has developed at a 
constantly accelerating rate, becoming more highly dif- 
ferentiated and specialised and at the same time more 
highly integrated, has in fact developed in a way closely 

370 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 371 

analogous to the evolution of the individual mind. The 
collective mind, in thus developing, reacts upon the 
development of individual minds, raising all far above 
the level they could independently attain, and some in 
each generation to a very high level both intellectually and 
morally. 

The merest outline of a discussion of this great problem 
is alone possible. I can do no more than offer some sugges- 
tions toward the full solution of it. Let us note, first, 
that continued progress, far from being the rule, as is 
commonly assumed by popular writers, has been a rare 
exception, as Sir H. Maine pointed out in Ancient Law. 
He wrote — ' ' In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most 
difficult for a citizen of Western Europe to bring thor- 
oughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation 
which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of 
the world." "It is indisputable that much the greatest 
part of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that 
its civil institutions should be improved, since the moment 
when external completeness was first given to their em- 
bodiment in some permanent record. Except in a small 
section of the world, there has been nothing like the grad- 
ual amelioration of a legal system." And what is true of 
systems of law is true of all the other elements of the 
intellectual and moral tradition which constitute a civilisa- 
tion or national culture. 

Sir H. Maine added — ''The difference between the 

stationary and progressive societies is, however, one of the 

great secrets which inquiry has yet to penetrate." His 

own contribution, which he regarded as a partial solution 

only, was that the difference depends in part upon the 

'period at which the customs of a people become codified 

in written law. If, as the tribes of a people become settled 

'and enter upon a national existence, there is no written 

h code of law and custom, customs, he urged, which at their 



372 Development of National Character 

origin were socially advantageous tend to become ex- 
tended by analogy to other fields of practice and to assume 
an excessive and senseless rigour; for example, the custom 
of cleanliness becomes the exceedingly elaborate ritual of 
purification, which among the Hindus limits and restrains 
social life at every point. Or a useful distinction of classes 
becomes a rigid caste system, than which nothing is more 
prejudicial to progress, intellectual or moral. The con- 
tinuation of the process of extension by analogy through 
long ages has resulted in nearly all the uncivilised and less 
civilised peoples of the modern world being bound down 
on every hand by a system of rigid and worse than use- 
less customs, which, restricting both thought and action, 
render progress impossible. On the other hand, early 
codification of custom in a system of written laws secures 
that thereafter custom shall not develop in this blind 
unintelligent and socially prejudicial manner, but shall be 
developed only by deliberate intention and the reasoned 
forethought of the ruling powers of society; it will then 
develop in the main, in spite of many mistakes, in a way 
which promotes the efficiency of social life and the welfare 
of society. 

Maine's suggestion is in harmony with the fact that the 
progressive peoples have not been those who invented or 
learnt the art of writing at an early period. Writing and 
the written codification of customary law could not be 
invented by any people until they had attained to a settled 
life and a considerable degree of social organisation; and 
then, when the invention was worked out sufficiently, the 
damage had been done, socially advantageous customs 
had already degenerated into useless rites and ceremonial 
observances; and writing served only to establish these 
more firmly, to fix their yoke upon the necks of the people, 
as in the case of the Hindus. 

On the other hand, the progressive peoples have been 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 373 

those who remained in a savage or barbarous condition 
until a relatively late period, and who then acquired by- 
imitation the arts of writing and of reducing custom to 
written law, acquired them in a fully developed condition 
from the peoples who had invented and developed these 
arts. They have, therefore, enjoyed the advantages of 
written laws from the beginning of their civilisation. 

But, as Maine recognised, the acquisition of writing at 
the outset of national life is by no means sufficient to 
account for the progressiveness of the nations of South and 
Western Europe ; we must seek other causes and conditions 
of their mental progress. 

We have already noted certain features of the racial 
constitution which were probably essential to the con- 
tinued progress of the European peoples — namely, the 
high degree of evolution of the social disposition through 
group selection in the long prehistoric or race-making 
period; a group selection which probably was far more 
severe and prolonged than the peoples of any other part 
of the world were subjected to; and which in turn was due 
probably, as we have seen, to the great diversity of physi- 
cal surroundings and to the comparative severity of the 
climate of Europe, especially of the northerly parts in 
which the most progressive European race was formed; 
for these physical conditions generated in the race an 
innate energy, a capacity for sustained effort. 

Without the highly developed social disposition in the 
mass of their members, primitive societies could not have 
survived those changes of custom and institution which 
were essential features of their progress. Without their 
innate energy, active rivalry and competition, which have 
been chief factors in social progress, would not have been 
constant features of the relations of these societies. Still 
the possession of a highly evolved social disposition by the 
European peoples does not in itself suffice to account for 



374 Development of National Character 

the continued mental evolution of the leading nations. 
For not all the European peoples have progressed; and, 
of those that have progressed, some have done so much 
more effectively than others. 

Let us first examine the question — In what has progress | 
primarily consisted? Has it been primarily a progress of 
the moral or of the intellectual traditions? As I men- 
tioned in an earlier chapter, we have here one of the main 
points of dispute. 

Buckle was the great advocate of the primacy of intel- 
lectual development in the sense of increase of natural 
knowledge. The argument by which he sought to estab- 
lish the position runs as follows : Progress must have been 
due to improvement either of moral or of intellectual 
principles. But moral principles have been almost the 
same in all ages. ''To do good to others; to love your 
neighbour as yourself; to honour your parents — these and 
a few others, are the sole essentials of morals; but they 
have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot 
or tittle has been added to them by all the sermons, 
homilies, and text-books which moralists and theologians 
have been able to produce." On the other hand, know- 
ledge and intellectual principles have made immense 
strides; hence all progress must have been primarily 
intellectual rather than moral. Buckle did not deny 
that there has been some moral progress ; rather he insisted 
upon it as an essential feature of the progress of civilisa- 
tion; but it has, according to him, consisted only in the 
more effective operation of unchanging principles, and this 
more effective operation is secondary to, and due to, 
intellectual progress. 

I think we must agree with Buckle that the increasing 
store of knowledge and the increased command over 
nature that comes with it has been the primary condition 
of the progress of nations. For, since the early middle 

1 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 375 

ages, the moral natures of men and the teaching of Christ- 
ianity have been the same in all essentials ; yet for many 
centuries there was practically no progress. Kidd himself 
admitted that progress only set in rapidly about the time 
of the Reformation. And it is notorious that this progress 
including the Reformation itself, was due to the stimula- 
tion of the intellect by a number of influences — by the 
renewed study of classical art and literature, by the dis- 
covery of the New World, by the increased intercourse of 
nations resulting from the improvement of the art of navi- 
gation, by the accumulation of wealth and the formation 
of a powerful middle class. It is clear also that religion, 
far from having been the sufficient cause or instrument 
of progress, was largely responsible for the stagnation of 
the middle ages, through sternly repressing the sceptical 
spirit and leading off men's minds from inquiry into na- 
tural laws, to the discussion of many topics on which it 
was impossible to achieve knowledge and which were 
necessarily barren of results making for human progress. 
Nevertheless the Christian religion has in the long run 
co-operated in forwarding the mental evolution of the 
European peoples in an important manner which we must 
briefly consider later — namely, through its effects upon 
social organisation. 

Without raising the question of the natural or super- 
natural origin of religion or of any particular religion, we 
may say that from the point of view of national life, a 
religion is essentially a system of supernatural sanctions 
for social conduct, for conduct conforming to the moral 
code of the society, and especially for customs regulating 
the family and the relations of the sexes, on which, more 
than on anything else, social stability depends. It is, 
thus, the great conservative agency; for it enforces the 
observance of custom by a system of rewards and punish- 
ments; in the earlier stages of society, especially by punish- 



376 Development of National Character 

merits. It is essentially intolerant of change of custom or 
belief ; and even the Christian religion has exemplified this 
principle in the terrible persecutions and innumerable wars 
for which it has been responsible. 

The great function and tendency of any religion, once 
estabHshed among a people, is to preserve intact the cur- 
rent moral code and to secure conformity to it. Never- 
theless, some reHgions are less prohibitive of progress than 
others; and, when such a religion replaces a more restric- 
tive one, an important condition of progress is realised. 
But, in so far as progress is then favoured, this is not due 
to the changed operations of the religious emotions and 
sentiments; it is due to the great religious teachers who 
have succeeded in breaking down the bonds imposed by 
the more primitive religion, and so have given freer play 
to the intellectual faculties; the improvements of religious 
systems have been negative or permissive conditions of 
progress, rather than its effective cause. 

Progress has, then, always resulted primarily from the 
gains made by the intellect and added to the intellectual 
tradition, that is to say, from the progress of knowledge. 
Nevertheless, the free play of the intellect is always a 
danger to society, for the reason that the customs and 
moral code of a society, however imperfect and sanctioned 
by a religion however narrow, are yet the bonds by which 
alone it can be held together; to their influence has been 
largely due in every age the subordination by the members 
of a society of their individual egoistic ends to the welfare 
of the society as a whole. 

The spirit of inquiry, which always leads men to ques- 
tion the authority of these customs and moral codes and 
of their rehgious sanctions and thus tends to weaken them, 
is, then, a socially disruptive force, at the same time that 
it is the source of all progress. Hence, though the free 
play of the intellect and of the spirit of inquiry may secure 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 377 

for a time the rapid progress of civilisation, it cannot alone 
secure continued progress. Continued progress has only 
resulted where there has been maintained a happy balance 
between the conservative and the progressive forces; 
between the authority of custom and the moral code on 
the one hand and the free activity of the intellect on the 
other. Wherever the progressive force has outrun the 
conservative, progress has been first rapid and then has 
come abruptly to an end. Greece exemplified this process 
in the clearest manner. It was the excessive seeking of 
individuals for their own power and glory, unrestrained 
by the customs and religious systems which their intellect 
had outgrown, that ruptured the bonds of society, plunged 
the State into war and civil strife, and eventually de- 
stroyed it by the extermination of the Greek aristocracy. 
The same is true of the brilliant but brief periods of rapid 
progress exhibited by the mediaeval Italian States. Intel- 
lect outran and undermined morals, and progress was 
brought to an end. 

Some observers have maintained that history will pass 
the same verdict upon modern France, and that most of 
our leading nations of the present day are seriously 
threatened by the same danger. 

Any long continued progressive evolution of the mind 
of a people has been, then, a rare exception in the history 
of the world; partly because the free play of the spirit of 
inquiry and of the intellectual faculties, which is the source 
of all progress, exerts a socially disruptive tendency, so 
that progress is by its very nature dangerous to the stabil- 
ity of any nation; but partly also because the free play of 
the spirit of inquiry has been so rarely achieved or per- 
mitted, so that even such progress as has led on to social 
disruption has been exceptional. 

A long period of intellectual and moral stagnation in the 
rigid bonds of custom and religion has been the rule for 



378 Development of National Character 



nearly all the peoples of the earth, so soon as they had 
attained to a settled mode of existence. The primary 
question, then, to be answered in seeking to account for 
the progress of nations, is — What conditions enabled the 
spirit of inquiry to break the bonds of custom and religion 
and to extend man's knowledge of man and of the world in 
which he hves? 

Bagehot, in considering more particularly the progress 
of political institutions, put the problem in much the same 
way. He pointed out that the first age of the life of na- 
tions is always an age dominated by custom resting on 
unquestioned religious sanctions ; an age in which there is 
often a vast amount of discussion of detail, as, for example, 
discussion of the details of military expeditions, but never 
discussion of principles; and he maintained that an age 
marked by the discussion of principles, involving the 
questioning of traditions, moral and intellectual, initiates 
and characterises every period of progress. 

There is much to be said for the view that the most 
important condition of progress in its earlier stages was in 
most cases, perhaps in all, the conquest of a more primi- 
tive people by one more advanced in culture or of superior 
racial type, who remained to settle in the conquered 
territory, and, not driving out or exterminating the con- 
quered inhabitants, established themselves as a governing 
class. History and archaeology show that this occurred 
at least once in most of the areas where nations have 
developed spontaneously to any considerable degree; the 
earliest known instances being those of Egypt and Chaldea 
as long as ten thousand years ago. The same thing 
occurred again in India, and later still in Greece; and 
throughout early European history the process was fre- 
quently repeated in various areas. Every one of the 
modem peoples of Europe has been formed through such 
fusion by conquest of two peoples, in some instances 



1 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 379 

several times repeated; and, though none of these modern 
European peoples originated their own civilisations, but 
largely took over by imitation the civilisation ready made 
for them by the more precocious peoples of Asia and by 
Greece and Rome, these fusions and the resultant com- 
posite character of the European peoples no doubt have 
tended greatly to promote progress. And it is easy to see 
how in several ways such a fusion by conquest of two 
peoples must have tended to set free the spirit of inquiry, 
that prime condition of progress. Three of these seem to 
have been of chief importance. 

The most obvious way in which progress has been pro- 
moted was that the conquering invaders became a leisured 
aristocracy, having their material needs supplied by the 
labour of the indigenous population, which became a more 
or less servile class. All the ancient civilisations were 
thus founded upon servile labour. We may be sure that, 
until such a social system resulted from conquest, no 
people made much progress; because all individuals were 
fully occupied in securing their means of subsistence, either 
by warfare, by the tending of herds, or by agriculture. 
Each people was self-supporting, and knew no or few 
needs beyond those which their own labour was able to 
supply; and labour was individual, or was co-operative 
only among small groups, such as the communal family 
groups. It could, therefore, undertake no great works, 
whether of building or engineering, such as large public 
buildings, irrigation, or road making. Each family con- 
sumed what it produced, and consequently there was no 
large accumulation of capital; for there were no motives 
for storing up their primitive wealth, and generally no 
wealth of durable and storable form. 

But, as soon as a ruling class could dispose of the labour 
of a large part of the population, making them work for a 
mere subsistence wage, there was initiated that regime of 



38o Development of National Character 



^ 



capital and labour on which, up to the present time, all 
civilisation has been founded. Wealth was accumulated ; 
great works, such as the pyramids, demanding enormous 
expenditure of human life and work, could be undertaken; 
and a leisured class was created, which, being freed from 
the necessity of bodily toil, was able to turn its energy to 
speculative inquiry, to the enjoyment of art and luxury, 
to directing and organising the labour of the multitude, to 
inventing the tools that render labour more effective, to 
studying natural phenomena such as the cycle of the 
seasons, a more accurate knowledge of which added to the 
productivity of labour ; for it was in the service of wealth 
production, that in the main science arose, especially 
mathematics and mechanical and astronomical science, 
arithmetic and geometry through the need of a practical 
art of measurement, astronomical science through the need 
of foreseeing the seasons. 

The desire to enjoy art and luxury is one which feeds 
itself and growls, when once aroused; and it was these 
growing desires of the leisured and wealthy classes which 
created trade, or at any rate first developed it beyond the 
merest rudiments; and in doing so led to regular and 
friendly intercourse between nations. 

A second very important result of such fusion by con- 
quest must have been the breaking up to some extent of 
custom and the weakening of the religious sanctions. Un- 
der the new regime, both the conquering and the conquered 
peoples would find their old customs imsuited to their 
novel social relations, and inadequate to regulate their 
changed occupations. The old customs of both would 
inevitably be thrown into the melting pot ; at the same time, 
the religious sanctions of both would be weakened by the 
intimate contact of two systems, neither of which, in the 
presence of a rival system, would henceforth be able to 
claim unquestioned authority, until one had suppressed 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 381 

the other or a stable synthesis of the two had been effected. 
So long as each individual never had intercourse with any 
but those who accepted the national or tribal religion, it 
was well-nigh impossible for anyone to question its au- 
thority ; but as soon as the devotees of two religions lived 
intermixed, the question — Which religion was true? must 
inevitably have arisen in some minds. The weight of 
custom and of religious sanctions, which lies so heavily on 
a primitive society, restricting all enterprise, forbidding 
inquiry and repressing the use of the intellectual powers, 
would thus be lightened and scope be given for experiment 
in thought and action. And either people, coming into 
more or less intimate contact for the first time with a sys- 
tem of beliefs and customs and institutions other than 
their own, must have been led to compare, discuss, and 
reflect upon these things; the sceptical spirit and the 
intellect must have been greatly stimulated. There must 
have been a conflict of ideas and the initiation of an age of 
discussion. In short such a fusion by conquest must have 
broken up what Bagehot calls the "cake of custom" as 
nothing else could, and so have rendered the intellectual 
and moral traditions once more plastic and capable of 
progress. 

No doubt in many cases such disintegration of the old 
systems went too far, and the society, before it could 
evolve anew a sufficiently strong and adequate system of 
customs and sanctions, went to pieces. In modern times 
many primitive societies have been broken up and de- 
stroyed in just this way — namely, their customs and the 
religious sanctions of their morality have been undermined 
and weakened by the contact of the more complex sys- 
tems of civilised men, and they have not been able to 
assimilate the new system rapidly enough to enable it 
effectively to replace their own shaken and decaying 
code. 



382 Development of National Character 

A third way in which the fusion by conquest of two 
peoples must have made for progress was by biological 
blending, the crossing by intermarriage of the two stocks. 
We have seen that there is a considerable amount of evi- 
dence to show that, when two stocks are very widely 
different in mental and physical characters, the result of 
crossing is Hkely to be bad ; the crossed race is likely to be 
inferior to, and less fit for the battle of life than, both 
parental stocks; the characters of individuals will be apt 
to be made up of a number of elements more or less in- 
consistent with one another; such a composite character 
made up of inharmonious elements will be apt to be un- 
stable and constantly at war with itself. Character of 
this kind and the tragic struggles to which it is liable to 
find itself committed has been well described in fiction by 
a number of authors, especially in stories of the Mulattoes 
of America. On the physical side it has been shown that 
such cross-bred races tend to die out owing to lack of bal- 
ance of the physical constitution. 

On the other hand, we saw that the crossing of two 
closely allied racial stocks seems to have a tendency to 
produce a cross-bred race superior to both parent stocks, 
and especially to produce a variable stock. It is, I think, 
probable that the frequently repeated blending of allied 
stocks in Europe has been the fundamental biological 
condition of the capacity of the European peoples for 
progressive national life. 

In the case of the conquest of one people by another 
differing very markedly in racial qualities, there seem to 
be two alternatives equally prejudicial to the continued 
progress of the nation so formed. On the one hand, free 
intermarriage may take place, resulting in an inferior 
cross-bred race incapable of high civilisation, as seems to 
have occurred in most of the countries of South America, 
where it is with the greatest difficulty that the outward 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 383 

forms of the high civilisation which they have imitated 
from Europe are maintained. On the other hand, where 
especially the outward physical characters are very differ- 
ent, the conquering people may hold itself apart from the 
conquered, and maintain itself as a ruling class, which 
prides itself on the purity of its blood and which tends to 
harden into a caste. Such conquest without subsequent 
blending gives rise to a civilisation which, being founded 
upon a rigid caste system, is incapable of continued 
progress. This is what has happened in India. The 
fair-skinned Aryan invaders despised the dark-skinned 
indigenous peoples, whom they spoke of as being scarcely 
human, and, in spite of a good deal of crossing, they have 
in theory and in the case of the Brahmans, at least to a 
considerable extent in practice, maintained the purity of 
their blood, by means of the development of the caste 
system. 

Europe on the other hand was fortunate in that all the 
different peoples, or most of the people, from which its 
nations have been formed were of allied race; they were all, 
with few exceptions, of the white race, sufficiently nearly 
allied not to produce inferior cross-races but rather to 
produce some superior sub-races. The conquered peoples 
have been so similar to their conquerors in physical type 
that crossing could take place without the cross-bred off- 
spring bearing the indelible marks of inferior or mixed 
parentage, such as a dark skin or a woolly head. Hence, 
although caste systems were formed, they did not prove 
rigid; free intermarriage took place, and it was not im- 
possible for individuals of the conquered race or of the 
mixed stock to rise into the superior ruling class. The 
importance of this may be seen, on reflecting how the 
merest trace of negro blood in individuals of mixed origin 
in North America is apt to show itself in the physical 
features and how, even in that enlightened and Christian 



I 



384 Development of National Character 

country, a trace so revealed suffices to condemn a man, 
no matter how great his powers or refined his character, tol 
remain a member of the inferior caste. ' 

But, apart from the possible improvement of the racial 
qualities of the whole people, or of the average individuals 
in general, which may well have occurred in Europe, the 
biological blending of allied races may give important 
advantages to the resulting people in another way^ — 
namely, by increasing its variability, the variability of its 
mental qualities. If a people is extremely homogeneous 
in the racial sense, it may be expected to display little 
variability, its members will be of essentially similar 
mental qualities and of a uniform level of mental capacity; 
and this will tend to make them a very stable, but a very 
conservative unprogressive, nation. This seems to be 
true of China, and to be in large part the source of its 
extreme stability and extreme conservatism. 

Where, on the other hand, a people is formed by the 
intimate blending by intermarriage of two or more racial 
stocks, it is likely to be a variable one; there will be large 
departures in many directions from the average type of 
mental ability, and there will be individuals varying by 
excess of development of various capacities as well as 
others varying by defect of development. 

And a people of variable and therefore widely diversified 
mental capacities will, even though its average capacity 
is no greater than that of a more homogeneous people, be 
more likely to make progress in civilisation, and this for 
three reasons. 

First, variability is the essential condition of all race 
progress by biological adaptation; for it is by the selection 
of variations, the survival and multiplication of types 
varying in certain directions in larger proportions than the 
average type, that all race progress and adaptation seems 
to have been achieved. Hence, increased variability, 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 385 

resulting from the blending of races, will render a people 
so formed capable of race progress and of more rapid 
adaptation; for example, in the peoples of Northern 
Europe, it would have favoured the adaptation of the 
constitutions of the people to the severity of the climate, 
and to those peculiar social conditions which, as we have 
seen reason to believe, have been the source of their unique 
combination of qualities. 

Secondly, variability of mental qualities would be 
favourable to the coming of the age of discussion; for in 
such a people custom would rule with less force, its sway 
would be more apt to be questioned and disputed, than 
among a highly homogeneous people. 

Thirdly, and this is probably the most important 
manner in which race blending has favoured the progress 
of nations, among the variations from the average type 
produced by race crossing would be men of exceptional 
capacities in various directions. 

We have already noted that all progress of the intellec- 
tual and moral traditions eventually depends upon the 
activities of men of exceptional powers of various kinds, 
upon the great religious or ethical teacher, the inventor, 
the artist, the discoverer. A people may, like the Chinese, 
have a high average capacity of intellectual ability; but, 
if it cannot from time to time produce men of far more than 
average capacity along various lines, it will not progress 
very far spontaneously. Exceptional intellectual capacity 
is, however, a variation from the type, as the biologists 
say, just such as may be expected to result from race 
blending ; there will be, among the variations in all direc- 
tions, variations in the direction of exceptional capacity 
of various kinds. Hence a nation of blended variable 
stocks will, other things being the same, be far more 
likely to be capable of continued evolution than a homo- 
geneous people of equal average mental capacity, among 

2S 



386 Development of National Character 

whom few men are capable of rising to any distinguished 
height. 

This view of the effects of race blending is borne out 
empirically by the comparison of the peoples of the world. 
The European peoples have been the most progressive, 
and they, more than all others, have been formed by 
repeated blendings of allied stocks. Within Europe it is 
the peoples among whom this blending has been carried 
furthest who have proved most progressive — the French, 
the English, and the Italian; and, conversely, the least 
blended peoples have been the most backward, and have 
contributed least to the general progress of civilisation in 
Europe; for example the large, almost purely Slav, popu- 
lation which forms the bulk of the Russian nation. 

We pass on to consider other conditions which have con-l 
tributed to setting free and stimulating the spirit of in- 
quiry. We have seen that physical environment played 
a predominant part in moulding the mental quahties of 
races in the prehistoric period. And we must recognisei 
that, although with the beginning of settled national life 
it probably ceased to modify race qualities to any consider- 
able extent, it has yet been important in favouring thai 
rapid evolution of the intellectual tradition of some 
peoples, and this in several ways. First, by its direct 
influence upon the minds of individuals. Buckle and 
others have pointed out that, while, in India and through- 
out a great part of Asia, the physical environment was 
unfavourable to intellectual progress, while its vast and, 
terrible aspects fertilised the superstition of the people,! 
and repressed the spirit of inquiry by rendering hopeless 
any attempt to cope with its terrific displays of force, in 
Europe, and especially in South and Western Europe, the 
comparatively small scale on which the physical features 
are planned and the relative feebleness of the forces of nature 
encouraged men to adopt a bolder attitude towards them. 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 387 

Buckle, contrasting Greece with India in this respect, 
showed how the physical features of both countries were 
reflected in their national cultures ; how, while the Hindus 
cringed in fear before monstrous and cruel gods, the Greeks 
fashioned their gods in their own image, simply personify- 
ing each leading human attribute, and made of them a 
genial family of beings, differing from men and women in 
little but their immortality and their superior facilities 
for the enjoyment of life. In general the buoyancy and 
serenity of the Greek attitude towards life and nature re- 
flected the beautiful, secure and diversified aspects of their 
physical environment. In such an atmosphere the spirit 
of inquiry would naturally flourish more freely than where 
man's spirit was oppressed by the fear of terrible and un- 
controllable forces, and where he was made to feel too 
keenly the limitations of his mental and physical powers. 
Buckle summed up his review of these effects as follows : 
*'In the civilisations exterior to Europe, all nature con- 
spired to increase the authority of the imaginative facul- 
ties and to weaken the authority of the reasoning ones. 
In Europe has operated a law the reverse of this, by virtue 
of which the tendency of natural phenomena is, on the 
whole, to limit the imagination, and embolden the under- 
standing ; thus inspiriting man with confidence in his own 
resources, and facilitating the increase of his knowledge, 
by encouraging that bold, inquisitive and scientific spirit, 
which is constantly advancing and on which all future 
progress must depend. ' ' 

I think we must accept this view of the importance of 
the direct action of physical environment on the minds of 
individuals. To deny, as Hegel did, the important influ- 
ence of physical environment upon the development of 
Greek culture, because the Turks have enjoyed a similar 
climate without producing a similar culture, is unreason- 
able. The progress of civilisation has always been the 



388 Development of National Character 

result of a multiplicity of causes and conditions; and we 
cannot deny all importance to any one, whether race or 
climate or social organisation or religion or any other, 
because in some particular instance it has failed to produce 
the progress of which in other instances it has been one of 
a number of co-operating causes. 

The diversity and small scale of the physical features of 
South and Western Europe has favoured the progress of 
the intellectual tradition in another important way. The 
land is divided by natural barriers into a number of na- 
tural territories, the population of each of which has 
naturally tended to become one nation and to develop a 
national culture. In this way there arose a number of 
nations and States in close proximity with one another, 
yet each developing along its own Hnes. When the de- 
velopment of wealth and commerce brought these diversi- 
fied cultures into friendly intercourse with one another, 
the exchange of ideas and the general imitation of the 
useful arts of one people by its neighbours must have made 
very strongly for progress ; the culture of each of a group 
of neighbouring peoples no longer progressed only by the 
addition of the ideas and inventions of its own exceptional 
intellects, but each group had the opportunity of selecting I 
and imitatively adopting whatever seemed to them best 
among the ideas, the arts, and inventions of the neighbour- 
ing peoples. 

It is generally admitted that this was one of the main 
conditions of the rapid development of the cultiire of the 
ancient Greeks, situated as they were within easy reach of 
several of the oldest civilisations, those of Egypt and of 
South-Eastern Asia; they were also within reach of a 
number of less civilised peoples, and therefore enjoyed 
opportunities for trade of a kind which, being peculiarly 
lucrative, has in all ages hastened the acquisition of wealth » 
and capital and stimulated the development of commerce. - 

i 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 389 

All the most progressive European peoples have enjoyed 
similar advantages ; and it has been maintained with some 
plausibility that the principal cause of the shifting of the 
centre of progressive civilisation from the Eastern Mediter- 
ranean to the west of Europe has been the improvement of 
the art of navigation and the discovery of the New World 
and of the sea route to Asia and the East Indies ; for these 
gave the western countries the most advantageous posi- 
tions for the conduct of a world wide commerce. No 
doubt the factor mentioned has been important in produc- 
ing this change. 

But, when we consider the ancient European civilisa- 
tions and compare them with our own, we realise that, in 
spite of all the circumstances which we have enumerated 
and briefly considered as factors stimulating the spirit of 
inquiry and making for progress of their intellectual tradi- 
tion, and in spite of their brilliant and in some respects 
unapproachable achievements, they were nevertheless 
radically incapable of continued progress. Greek civilisa- 
tion certainly progressed at a marvellous rate for some 
centuries ; yet there is every reason to believe that it bore 
within itself the inevitable causes of its ultimate decay or 
stagnation. And, when we consider Roman civilisation, 
we see that, through all the long centuries of the greatness 
of Rome, it was essentially unprogressive. There was no 
continued evolution of the national mind and character. 
Save in respect to the single province of law, Roman 
civiHsation, when it entered upon the period of its decay, 
had not appreciably progressed in any essential respects 
beyond the stage reached more than a thousand years 
earlier. Rome was in fact less truly a nation in its later 
than in its earlier age. It had superficially imitated rather 
more of Greek culture and it had incorporated a ntimber 
of bizarre elements from the many peoples which had 
been brought under the sway of the Roman sceptre; but 



390 Development of National Character 



1 



neither in religion, nor in philosophy, nor art, nor science, 
nor in any of the practical modes of controlling the forces 
of nature, had it made any substantial gains ; and its social 
organisation tended more and more to the t3rpe of a cen- 
tralised irresponsible bureaucracy. ^ 

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in the lasti 
thousand years the nations of Western Europe have made! 
immense progress; nor that this progress has been acceler- 
ating from century to century in a way which seemed toj 
reach a climax in the wonderful century just closed; though' 
there appears good prospect of continued progress and 
perhaps of continued acceleration throughout the century] 
to come and perhaps for many more. 

What then is the cause of this great difference between 
the civilisation of Western Europe and all preceding 
civilisations? The difference is, I think, essentially due 
to difference of social organisation. As argued in a pre- 
vious chapter, social organisation was of less influence in 
the earlier ages, but has assumed a constantly increasing 

^ Otto Seeck {op. cit., vol. i., p. 270) writes — " The equipment of the legion- 
aries remained unchanged from Augustus to Diocletian : no improvements of 
tactics, no new munitions of war were brought into use during more than 
three hundred years. The Roman saw his enemies becoming ever morel 
terrible, his own army ever less efficient; for now this, now that, Province! 
was laid waste and all were threatened. It was, therefore to the most! 
urgent interest of every citizen that this state of ajffairs should be remedied;' 
the most cultured circles were familiar with the needs of the army, for all 
the higher officers came from the class of Senators and nobles. Neverthe- 
less, there appeared not a single invention, which might have assured to the 
Roman soldiers their erstwhile superiority! Books indeed were written 
upon tactics, strategy and fortification, but their authors almost without 
exception were content to expound in a formal manner what their more 
capable forefathers had taught; in this literature the expression of any 
new idea was carefully avoided. ... As in the military sphere, so also 
was it in all others. Neither in agriculture, nor in handicrafts, nor in the 
practice of statecraft, did a new idea of any importance appear since the 
first century after Christ. Literature and art also moved only in sterile 
imitation, which became always more poverty-stricken and technically 
feebler." 



Progress of Nations in their Youth 391 

importance throughout the evolution of civilisation; and 
it is now predominant over all other conditions. We 
must, then, first define this difference of social organisa- 
tion; secondly, we must show how it makes for progress; 
and thirdly, conjecture how the social organisation of 
Western Europe, so favourable to the continued develop- 
ment of nations, has been brought about. 

The great difference which divides the social organisa- 
tion of the modern progressive peoples from that of all the 
ancient European civilisations is that, under it, the in- 
dividual enjoys greater liberty and more securely founded 
rights as against the community, and as against all other 
individuals. This change is summed up in Sir H. Maine's 
dictum that "the movement of progressive societies has 
hitherto been a movement from status to contract." 

All the ancient civilised societies, Greece and Rome no 
less than all the others, rested upon the fundamental 
assumption of the absolute supremacy of the State, the 
assumption that the individual existed only for the State 
and that the welfare of the State was the supreme end to 
which all individual rights and liberties must be subordin- 
ated absolutely, was the end to the securing of which all 
custom, and all law, all social and family relations and 
institutions and religion itself were but the means. And 
the State was a politico-religious organisation, membership 
of which implied the blood relationship of its citizens and 
a common participation in the state religion ; while the 
State gods were conceived as being themselves ancestors, 
or in some other way kinsmen, of the citizens. ^ This bond 
of blood or kinship between the members of the State and 
its gods went back to the earliest times. It is the rule of 
almost all savage peoples; and the religious rites of many 
include some rite symbolising or renewing this blood bond, 
such as smearing the blood of the kinsmen on the altars 

^ Cf. La Cite Antique of F. de Coulanges. 



392 Development of NationeJ Character 

of the gods, or drinking the blood of some animal which is 
held to be the symbolic representative of the god. And 
the supreme end of the State itself was the increase of its 
own power and stability, through the exercise of military j 
power and through military conquest. 

All human beings outside the State, outside this moral- 
politico-religious bond, were regarded as prima facie 
enemies of the State, without rights of any sort, without 
even the slightest claim to humane treatment. Hence, in 
war the slaughter of the conquered was the rule; and the 
practice of making slaves of prisoners of war and of con- 
quered peoples only arose through its profitableness, and 
was regarded as a great concession to the victims, whose 
natural fate was sudden death. Under this system, which 
inevitably became to some extent a caste system, with a 
caste of freemen or citizens ruling over slaves, each in- 
dividual was born to a certain status as a member of a 
particular family. His position and duties and rights in 
the family were rigidly prescribed by custom, and the 
law took account only of the relations of the family to the 
State. 



CHAPTER XX 
The Progress of Nations in their Maturity 

IN the foregoing chapter we have noted the great fact 
that the leading modern nations of Western Europe 
have shown a much greater capacity for progress than 
all the earlier civilised peoples, not excepting those of 
ancient Greece and Rome. I urged that this difference 
between the ancient and the modern European civilisations 
seemed to be chiefly due to a difference of social organisa- 
tion. I pointed out how the older nations were essentially 
caste nations, resting on a basis of slavery, and how all 
individual rights were entirely subordinated to the welfare 
of the State, a politico-religious organisation held together 
by the bond of kinship; how, within that organisation, the 
rights of each person were strictly defined throughout his 
life by the status to which he was born; and how all per- 
sons outside this organisation were regarded as natural 
enemies, towards whom no obligations of any kind were 
felt. We have now to notice that the form of social organ- 
isation towards which all the leading modern nations have 
been tending, and which some of them have now pretty 
well achieved, is one in which the last vestiges of the caste 
system and the rigid bonds of customary status are rapidly 
being abolished. In this new organisation social classes 
persist, but they are no longer castes; all members of the 
nation are regarded as being by nature free and equal; a 
career is open to every talent, and any man may rise to 
any position by the exertion of his abilities. His position 

393 



394 Development of National Character 

is one of extreme liberty as compared with that of any 
member of the ancient nations. He has definite rights as 
against the State. The State claims only a minimum of 
rights over him, the right to prevent him interfering with 
the rights of his fellow-citizens, the right to make him 
pay for his share of the privileges conveyed by its activities. 
And these rights it claims in virtue of contract between 
each citizen and all the rest. For each citizen is free to 
throw off his allegiance to the State and to leave it at will, 
and his continuance as a citizen of the State implies his 
acceptance of the contract. 

Even in religion, personal liberty has at last been achieved ; 
religion is no longer a State religion, the gods are no longer 
the national gods, and each man may accept any religion 
or none. This is the most striking instance of the im- 
mense distance, as regards the liberty of the individual, 
that divides the modern from the ancient nations. For 
with the latter, the function of religion was to preserve the 
security of the State ; and to question it in any way was to 
threaten the State, a principle fully acted upon by Athens 
in the time of her highest enhghtenment and glory. 
• The change is very striking also as regards the attitude 
of the citizens of one State towards those of any other and 
towards even the members of savage and barbarous com- 
munities. We no longer regard ourselves as devoid of all 
obligation towards such persons. Rather we tend to 
treat them as having equal rights with ourselves, the few 
specifically national rights excepted, and as having equal 
claims with our fellow citizens upon our considerate feeling 
and conduct towards them. 

The relations of individuals are, then, tending to be 
regulated, on the one hand, by contractual justice; on the 
other hand, by the moral obligation felt by each individual — 
an obligation not enforced by any exercise of the power 
of the State, but supported only by public opinion. The 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 395 

end we set before ourselves is no longer the welfare of the 
State, to be attained at any cost to individual liberty; it is 
rather an ideal of justice for every person, to which the 
welfare of the State must be, if necessary, subordinated. 
In short, instead of maintaining universal intolerance, we 
have made great strides towards universal tolerance. 

All this represents a profound change of social organi- 
sation, a great advance in social evolution. That it is 
intimately bound up with the progressiveness of a people, 
is shown by the fact that the degree to which the change 
has proceeded among the various nations runs parallel 
with their progress in all the essentials of civilisation. 
The change seems, indeed, to be one of the principal con- 
ditions of the progress of the nations of Western Etirope 
and, we may add, of the American nation, by which it has 
been carried further than by any other. How, then, does 
it make for progress? We may answer this question by 
considering how the social system which has given place 
to this new kind of social organization — namely, the caste 
system — renders progress difficult or impossible. 

Where the caste system is highly developed and rigidly 
maintained, as among the Hindus of India, its conservative 
unprogressive tendency is obvious enough. Each mantis 
bom a member of some one of many castes, and he can 
never hope to pass from one caste to another and higher 
caste. That fact alone removes at once the two greatest 
spurs to effort, the two most powerful motives that urge 
on the members of our modem societies to the fullest 
development and exercise of all their faculties ; namely, the 
desire to rise in the social scale and to place one's children 
at a more advantageous starting point in the battle of Hfe, 
and the fear of falling back in the social scale, of sinking 
to a lower level, with the consequent sacrifice of all the 
social consideration and other advantages which one's 
position at any given social level brings with it. Under 



396 Development of National Character 

the Hindu caste system, the poor Brahmin who has no 
possessions, perhaps not even a rag to cover his nakedness, 
is sure of the social consideration which his birth gives him, 
both for himself and his children. He can look disdain- 
fully upon the rich man and the prince of lower caste; and 
public opinion approves and supports him. This perhaps 
is the most important way in which the caste system 
prevents progress. But there are others almost equally 
serious. 

The occupations open to the members of each caste are 
rigidly Hmited. The members of one caste must be priests 
only, of another soldiers only, of another scavengers, of 
another potters, and so on. Now, if it were true that, 
when dexterities or mental powers generally are specially 
developed by use, the improvements of faculty resulting 
from this long practice and use were transmitted in any 
degree from generation to generation, we should expect 
the caste system to result, after many generations, in so 
many distinct breeds of men of highly specialised and 
perfected powers of the kinds used in the pursuit of each 
of the caste occupations. And this might make for pro- 
gress. Each man would be employed in the occupation 
for which he was best suited. But, as we have seen, it is 
probable that use-inheritance does not occur; and there 
seems to be no evidence that differentiation and hereditary 
specialisation of faculties of this sort result from the caste 
system.^ In each caste men continue to be bom of the 
most diverse powers suited for the most diverse occupa- 
tions; and one effect of the caste system is that the best 
powers of any man will in the great majority of cases be 
prevented from finding their most effective outlet. That 
involves a great waste of faculty, which makes strongly for 
stagnation. We shall realise the importance of this infiu- H 
ence, if we reflect on the great achievements, in the most 

* A fact which provides another argument against use-inheritance. 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 397 

diverse fields, of men who under our modern system have 
risen from some humble station and occupation, to which 
under the caste system they would have been rigidly 
confined. 

Again, within each caste custom rules the lives of the 
members with much greater force than it can exert in a 
large and complex society in the absence of the caste 
system. For each caste has its own tradition and cus- 
tomary code, which is necessarily narrow because of the 
uniformity of the conditions of life of those who obey 
it; hence tradition and custom have a narrow and well- 
defined field of operation; and the narrower the field 
of its application, the more rigidly will custom control 
action. 

The caste system is thus one which permits of great 
differentiation and specialisation of pursuits, without any 
weakening of the conservative forces of society. It is for 
that reason presumably that the social organisation of all 
early civilisations tended to this form. It was the most 
easily attained form which combined diversity with 
stability sufficiently to permit of the formation of a large 
society or nation ; and it was one which made for military 
efficiency. It formed, therefore, a natural stage of social 
evolution. 

In so far as the caste system still survives, it owes its 
survival to the continuance of the need of the State for 
military efficiency. And we see how its maintenance is 
still only rendered possible by its alliance with a State 
religion and its system of religious sanctions. In Russia, 
for example, the caste system was thus maintained by the 
alliance of the military power with the religious system. 
While we see how in modem Germany the attempt to 
maintain the caste system and the supremacy of the State 
over the rights and liberties of individuals is breaking 
down, as the religious sanctions are losing their hold upon 



398 Development of National Character 

the people. Social democracy, secularism, and the de- 
mand for liberty go hand in hand.' 

It is clear, then, that the caste system tends to produce 
a stable society and to prevent progress ; and that, in pro- 
portion as it gives way to liberty and equality of all men, 
both legal and customary, and to the recognition of the 
rights of individuals as against the State, progress must 
be favoured. 

In yet another way (perhaps more important than any 
other) the abolition of caste may favour development. In 
an earlier chapter I pointed out how every step in the de- 
velopment of the intellectual or the moral tradition of a 
people is initiated by some person of exceptional intellec- 
tual or moral power. I pointed out also how the existence 
of a hierarchy of social classes which are not exclusive 
castes, together with the operation of the social ladder by 
means of which individuals and families are enabled to 
climb up and down the social scale, tend to the segregation 
of ability in the classes of the upper part of the scale. 
They tend, in short, to produce classes capable of produc- 
ing in each generation a relatively large number of persons 
of more than average capacities. Or, in other words, they 
lead to the concentration and mutual enrichment of the 
strains of exceptional capacity ; they concentrate the best 
capacities of the people in a relatively small number of 
individuals of the favoured classes. And abilities so 
concentrated and raised in a certain proportion of in- 
dividuals to a higher power will be more favourable in 
every way to the growth of the national mind than the 
same sum of abilities more evenly diffused throughout the 
population. At present it is impossible to say how far this 
segregation of abilities has gone, and what part it has 
played in forwarding the mental development of any na- 

^ This was written before the Great War but needs, I think, no modifica- 
tion. 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 399 

tion. But that it has played some part, perhaps a very 
important one in some instances, can hardly be doubted. ' 

In Europe the feudal system served to tide over the 
period of transition from the ancient social organisation 
founded on caste and the supremacy of the poHtico-relig- 
ious State to the modern system, the transition from the 
system founded on status and regulated by custom to the 
system founded upon equality and liberty and regulated 
by contract. For the feudal system, although still more 
or less a caste system, was nevertheless founded to some 
extent on contract. The tenure of land involved a con- 
tract to perform services in return ; and such contract was 
the essence of the feudal system. 

But it was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies, when the feudal system was finally broken up and 
the Reformation initiated the age of religious tolerance, 
that the modern system substantially replaced the ancient 
system, and the age of rapid progress set in. 

In proportion as the change was achieved, the powers of 
all men were set free in an unfettered competition such as 
had never before been possible. Independence of thought 
and action, free discussion of all principles, and the recog- 
nition of the relativity of all truths, succeeded to unques- 
tioning subservience to ancient formulas and customs. 
Each man became comparatively free to follow his natural 
bent, to develop his best powers to the utmost, and to 
secure by the exercise of those powers the maximum of 
social consideration and of well-being, unfettered by 
arbitrary restrictions, civil or ecclesiastical. I think we 
may fairly say that the modern pragmatic or humanistic 

^ Francis Galton and his disciples have produced much evidence to show 
that the educated class of Englishmen includes a very much larger propor- 
tion of strains of high abihty than the rest of the people, it having been 
formed by the long continued operation of the social ladder. There is no 
reason to doubt the truth of this conclusion. 



400 Development of National Character 

movement in philosophy, in the midst of which we are 
living, represents the final stage of this emancipation of 
man from the bonds which he has created for himself. 

We have seen, then, that the modern system of social 
organisation does not make for the racial progress of a 
whole people, but probably up to the present time, for 
race-deterioration; nevertheless, it certainly makes for 
progress of the intellectual and moral traditions of peoples ; 
and we can now see in what way it makes for progress. 
The improvement of racial qualities by natural selection 
of the innately superior individuals has been brought to an 
end; the mortal conflict of societies has also practically 
been abolished as a factor of race progress, as also of collec- 
tive or social progress. These have been replaced by a 
new form of struggle for existence and of selection — name- 
ly, the rivalry and competition of ideas and of the institu- 
tions in which ideas become embodied, and the selection 
for survival of those ideas and institutions which are 
found, under the tests of practice and experience, most 
accordant with the truth and, therefore, best adapted to 
promote the welfare of societies and of their members. ^ 

And this process of survival of the fittest and eHmination 
of the tinfit among ideas and institutions takes place not 
only within nations, but has also international scope. The 
members of each nation no longer, as of old, regard all 
foreigners as their natiu-al enemies, no longer despise their 
institutions and reject their ideas with scorn. They are 
ready to learn from others, to let the ideas current among 
other peoples enter into competition with native-bom 
ideas; and so the number and variety of competing ele- 
ments increases and the intensity of the competition waxes 
ever keener. Every idea that constitutes an important 
advance in our intellectual outlook or in our practical 

* Prof. S. Alexander, in his Moral Order and Progress, was perhaps the 
first to draw attention to this form of the struggle for existence. 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 401 

command over nature rapidly finds acceptance throughout 
the civiHsed world and displaces some less true idea, some 
less appropriate institution, some less effective mode of 
action. 

Two great conditions, making for continued improve- 
ment of the moral and intellectual traditions, characterise, 
then, Western civilisation. First, within each nation there 
is going on the process of emancipation of all human facul- 
ties, so that they enter into the freest possible competition 
with one another on a footing of equality; this process, 
although now far advanced in all the leading nations, is 
still being carried further, and the whole trend of modern 
legislation is to confirm the change and hasten it to its 
completion. ^ Secondly, there is a circle of peoples whose 
ideas are thrown into the arena of rivalry, to suffer extinc- 
tion or to gain universal acceptance. This circle also is 
constantly wi(iening by the inclusion of peoples hitherto 
outside it; and each new admission, as of Japan in recent 
years, is a new stimulus to the further evolution of the 
collective mind of each nation concerned. Both these 
conditions depend upon improved social organisation. 

How then has this great change of social organisation 
been effected? To put this question is to approach an 
immense subject, the history of liberty and toleration. I 
can only make one or two brief remarks. It has been 
suggested by many authors, notably by Kidd in his volume 
on Western Civilisation, that we owe this great change to 
the Christian religion. It is pointed out that the Christ- 
ian religion, unlike most earlier religions, was from the 
first not a national or State religion but a universal re- 
ligion, and that its adoption has weakened the tyranny of 
the State by breaking up its alliance with religion. Fur- 
ther, it is a religion which, by its doctrine of the immortal- 

' This last sentence perhaps is only partially true. A rigid system of 
State Socialism would involve a retrogression in this respect. 

26 



402 Development of National Chairacter 

ity of the souls of all men, has tended to give dignity and 
value to each individual life, quite independently of 
personal status. Again, by its teaching of universal 
charity, it has to some extent softened and moraHsed the 
relations of men and of societies. But, that the replace- 
ment of a national religion by a universal religion which 
teaches the equaHty of all believers does not suffice to 
secure continued collective evolution is shown by the 
instances of Buddhism and Mohammedanism. Both of 
these are of this character, yet both have failed to render 
continuously progressive the societies that have accepted 
them. 

That the spread of the Christian religion does not in J 
itself suffice to account for the evolution from the ancient I 
to the modem type of social organisation is shown also by| 
the fact that it had held imdisputed sway among the 
peoples of Western Europe for more than a thousand years ■ 
before social evolution made any considerable advance.! 
Throughout that period, religion constantly called in the 
civil and military power of the State to enforce the accept- 
ance of its dogmas. And that its teachings did not suf- 
fice to produce religious or civil tolerance is shown by the 
fierce and incessant persecutions of heretics and the many 
religious wars that fill the history of medieval Europe. 

The religious tolerance and liberty of the modem era are 
rather features of a wider phenomenon, the general in- 
crease of tolerance and liberty, and they must be ascribed 
to the same causes as this wider fact. They imply a great 
evolution of the moral tradition, the most important and 
striking feature of which is the expansion of the sphere in 
which the sympathetic feelings find appUcation. There is 
no reason to suppose that the feelings and emotions under- 
lying the sympathetic and considerate treatment of others f 
have changed in character in the historic period. For long 
ages men have felt such sympathy and given considerate 

jl 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 403 

and just treatment to those who have been nearest to 
them; at first to the members of their own immediate 
family; later to the fellow-members of their own small so- 
ciety; and then, as societies expanded into complex caste 
societies, to the members of their own caste; later, as 
castes were broken down, to all their fellow citizens ; and 
still later in some degree to all men. 

It is this progressive extension of the sphere of imagina- 
tive sympathy which, more than anything else, has broken 
down all the social barriers that confined the energies of 
men and has set free their various faculties in that com- 
petition of ever increasing severity which is the principal 
cause underlying the modem progress of peoples. It is 
this which has destroyed nearly all the old bonds that 
fettered and limited men's activities in religion, in science, 
in politics, in art, in commerce, in manufacture, and has 
brought men in all these spheres into that intense, because 
free and equal, competition, which produces an ever accel- 
erating progress. It is this which has produced the almost 
universal acceptance of the entirely and most character- 
istically modem principle of *'one man one vote," a 
principle so hard to justify on any ground of expediency, 
from any considerations of the stability and welfare of the 
State. It is this also which has led to so greatly increased 
intercourse between peoples. 

It is sometimes contended that the realisation of the 
principles of equality and justice for all men has been 
secured only by the strife of the social classes, by the suc- 
cess of the lower classes in forcing a series of concessions 
from the ruling classes. This is a very imperfect and 
partial view of the process. If the ruling classes had con- 
sistently sought to maintain their power and exclusive 
privileges, and to maintain all the rest of society in a state 
of servitude or serfdom, there is little doubt that they 
could have done so. But their position has been weakened 



404 Development of National Character 



;ingj 



from within by the extension of their sympathies. Con- 
sider the great series of legislative changes which, during 
the nineteenth century, transformed the social organisa 
tion of this country, especially the factory laws, the 
franchise extension laws, and the laws for the aboHtion of 
slavery. These were for the most part of the nature of a 
voluntary abdication of power on the part of the classes 
in possession. Consider the topics which chiefly engross 
the attention of our legislators and are the centre of 
political and social discussion. They are the providing of 
a better and freer education for the children of the working 
classes, who of themselves would probably never have 
thought of such a thing; the providing of free meals for 
school children; the providing of work and food for the 
unemployed; temperance laws, land settlement, and emi- 
gration, the eight-hours day, housing of the working 
classes, free trade and cheap food, old age pensions; all 
measures for raising the standard of life of the labouring 
classes and securing them against the tyranny of capital. 

In respect of our relations to the lower peoples the same- 
proposition holds good. It would be easy for the Euro- 
pean nations to exterminate the black people of Africa, 
and to possess themselves of all their lands. ^ But public 1 
opinion will not now allow this ; it insists upon our moral 
obligation towards such peoples, that we are bound to try 
to help them to survive and to raise themselves to our 
level of culture. I 

The extension of the sphere of application of imagina-' 
tive sympathy has then been a factor of prime importance 
in producing the social evolution which underlies modem -I 
progress. J 

The factors that have brought about this extension' 
have been many and complex, and it is perhaps a hopeless 

^ As the Spaniard well-nigh exterminated in the name of the Church the| 
civilisation and the nations of Mexico and Peru. ' 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 405 

task to attempt to enumerate them and to apportion to 
each its share of influence. Undoubtedly, it has been 
produced largely by the influence of a relatively small 
number of enlightened leaders of opinion, such men as 
Wilberforce, Stuart Mill, Shaftesbury, John Locke, Rous- 
seau, and Voltaire — men whose original intellectual powers 
enabled them to criticise and reject the settled principles 
of their time. It was a work of liberation from custom 
and traditional prejudice effected by the spirit of inquiry, 
which questioned the validity of the old narrow concep- 
tions of the relations of men and peoples, the old narrow 
prejudices of caste and nation, and discovered their 
fallacies to the world; discovered, for example, that men 
of a religious persuasion slightly different from one's own 
are not necessarily wicked, nor those of a different nation- 
ality necessarily despicable and possessed of no ideas 
worthy of admiration and adoption. 

But the ground was prepared for the reception of the 
teachings of such men by the conflicts of men who desired 
nothing of tolerance and equality and liberty. This is 
best illustrated by the history of religious toleration. As I 
said before, religion is essentially conservative and intoler- 
ant of heresies. The first effect on religion of that revival 
and liberation of the spirit of inquiry which we call the 
Renascence, was to produce not religious toleration, but 
rather a bitter conflict of mutually intolerant sects. And 
religious toleration was eventually achieved largely by the 
realisation of the necessity of compromise among these 
warring and constantly multiplying sects; it was found 
impossible to weed out heresy by persecution. Yet who 
can doubt that the Church, if it believed that it saw its 
way to secure the universal acceptance of its doctrines by 
means of persecution, would long hesitate to return to its 
ancient pnactices? The coming of religious toleration was 
due to the application of the spirit of inquiry to religious 



4o6 Development of National Character 

systems; these inquiries produced irreconcilable sects, 
whose strife prepared the way for compromise and tolera- 
tion. 

The strife of parties and sects was itself part of a still 
wider process ; and this process must be recognised as the 
most important single condition of that widening of the 
sphere of imaginative sympathy which has been the root 
cause of the improvement of social organisation, of the 
general increase of liberty, and thus of the progress of the 
modern nations. This wider process is the general in- 
crease of human intercourse, both within nations and 
between them. Only so long as men know little of one 
another, can they continue to regard one another with 
entire hostility or cold indifference. The knowledge 
and understanding brought by personal intercourse is 
necessary to sympathy ; but as soon as, and in proportion 
as, such knowledge is acquired, the innate social tendencies 
common to all men are brought into play. As soon as 
man understands that his fellow man suffers the same 
pains and joys as himself, longs for the same goods, fears 
the same evils, throbs with the same emotions and desires, 
then he shares with him in some degree these feelings, in 
virtue of that fundamental law of all social beings, the 
law of primitive sympathy ; then also pity and sympathetic 
sorrow and tender regard are awakened in his breast ; then 
his fellow man is no longer the object of his cold or hostile 
glances, as a certain rival and probable enemy, but is seen 
to be a fellow toiler and sufferer whom he is willing to 
succour, a fellow creature whose joys and sorrows alike 
he cannot but share in some degree. 

Increasing freedom of intercourse throughout the 
civilised world, and beyond its boundaries also, has been ! 
the most characteristic feature of the age of progress, and 
in it we may recognise the most fundamental condition 
of that progress. Science and mechanical invention have 

il 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 407 

been the means by which this greater freedom of inter- 
course has been brought about. First and most import- 
ant perhaps was the invention of printing, the consequent 
spread of the habit of reading, and the wide diffusion of 
the written word. Second only to this was the improve- 
ment of the art of navigation, which brought the remotest 
peoples of the world within the ken of Europe and greatly 
promoted the intercourse of the European peoples, as well 
as the circulation of persons and news within each nation ; 
for the development of commerce over seas implies a 
corresponding development of commerce within the na- 
tional boundaries. Then came the use of steam in loco- 
motion on sea and land, the press and the telegraph ; and, 
with the advent of these, intercourse within and without 
became really free and abundant ; mutual knowledge and 
understanding between men and nations grew rapidly, and 
the age of progress was assured. 

The progressive character of the modern nations has 
been due, then, to the actions and reactions between the 
spirit of inquiry and the improvement of forms of social 
organisation ; each step in the one respect has reacted upon 
the other, stimulating further change in the same direction. 
And the medium through which they have chiefly thus 
worked upon one another has been the increase of inter- 
course between men and nations. The spirit of inquiry 
has urged men on to explore their fellow men and to study 
foreign nations, and it has provided the means for so doing ; 
the greater mutual knowledge and sympathy thus brought 
into being have in turn brought greater liberty to the 
spirit of inquiry, freeing it from the rigid bonds of custom 
and conservative tradition and enabling it to render hu- 
man intercourse yet more free and abundant. 

In this way we reconcile and synthesise the rival theo- 
ries of the causes of progress, the view that sees in the 
spirit of inquiry the sole agent of progress and that which 



t. 

I 



408 Development of National Character 

attributes it wholly to the improvement of morals and on 
social organisation. The great commandment, "Thou 
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," pointed the way of 
all progress ; but great and beautiful as it was, it could not 
immediately avail to break the bonds of the human spirit, 
the bonds of ignorance and fear; only gradually throug 
increase of knowledge could man learn that all men are his 
neighbours, and that not only the foreigner just beyond 
the frontier, but also the naked savage, chipping his stonel 
axe or weaving his rude basket for the reception of his 
neighbour's head, is a man of like passions with himself, 
with equal claims upon justice and freedom and all tha 
makes the humanity of man. 

It only remains to point out the part in human life of a 
new factor of progress which promises to eclipse all others 
in importance. The main theme of my earlier work' was 
that only through increase of knowledge of others is each 
man's knowledge of himself slowly built up and enriched, 
imtil it renders him capable of enlightened self -direction. 
So the main theme of this book is the development of the 
group mind, the increase of its self-knowledge and of its 
power of self-direction through increase of knowledge of 
other human societies. 

The age of progress through which the world has re- 
cently passed was an age of progress due to increase of 
human intercourse and consequent increasing under- 
standing by each nation of other nations and peoples.' 
This better knowledge of other peoples is now reacting' 
upon the self-knowledge of each nation, rapidly enriching 
it. Each of the great nations is beginning to imderstand 
itself, and to take thought for the morrow in the light of 
this self-knowledge; and this increase of national self- 
knowledge, this enrichment of national self-consciousness, 
is the great new factor which alone can secure the further 

^ Introduction to Social Psychology. 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 409 

progress of mankind. We saw in an earlier chapter that 
a nation is essentially the realisation of an idea, the idea of 
a nation, that only in so far as the idea of the nation exists 
and operates in the minds of the members of the nation, 
controlling their conduct and directing it to actions hav- 
ing reference to the nation as a whole, does a nation come 
into and continue in existence. The self-consciousness of 
nations is therefore not a new factor in their life. But 
their self-consciousness is now becoming reflective and 
immensely richer in content; so much so that it promises 
to operate virtually as a new factor of tremendous effi- 
ciency. 

We may illustrate the influence of this new factor by 
reverting again to the analogy between the mind of the 
individual and the mind of the nation which we developed 
at some length in an earlier chapter. In the developing 
individual, as in the evolving animal series, the de- 
velopment of self-consciousness is the condition of the 
development of true volition . B ef ore self -consciousness and 
a self -regarding sentiment are developed, conduct is deter- 
mined by feelings and impulses or by ideas and the desires 
they arouse, either some one desire rising alone to con- 
sciousness and issuing at once in action, or through a 
conflict of impulses and desires, some one of which eventu- 
ally predominates over the others and determines action; 
but action issuing from such a conflict of impulses and 
desires is not true volition. Action is truly volitional 
only when the ideal of the self in relation to the idea of the 
end to be achieved by each of the conflicting tendencies 
determines the issue of the conflict. 

In the mental life of nations, all those conflicts of ideas, 
of parties, of principles, and of systems, in which each 
strives to predominate over and displace others, and by 
natural selection of which (the death of the many less flt, 
the survival of the few better or more fit) the progress of 



410 Development of National Character 

recent centuries has been chiefly due; all these conflicts 
have been more or less blind conflicts, in which the idea of 
the whole nation, in relation to the end to be achieved by 
each of the conflicting tendencies, has generally played 
but a small part and a part that often has not made 
strongly for progress. National actions were in the main 
impulsive and instinctive actions, like those of young 
children or the higher animals. And for this reason — that 
nations had too little true self-knowledge, and had not 
developed a true and rich ideal of national life — the self- 
consciousness of nations was too poor in content to serve 
as the guide of actions making for progress. 

In the individual man, it is the growing richness and 
accuracy of self-knowledge which alone enables him to 
direct his actions effectively to secure his own welfare and 
to improve his character and powers. Just so in nations 
the rapid growth of their self-knowledge and the enrich- 
ment of their ideals of national life which characterise the 
present time must render their self-consciousness a far 
more efficient guide of all national deliberation and action. 

The self-knowledge of the individual grows chiefly, as 
we have seen, through intercourse with his fellows; his 
idea of himself develops in fulness and accuracy in the light 
of his knowledge of other selves, and this knowledge in 
turn develops in the light of his increasing knowledge of 
himself. Just so the self-knowledge of nations is now 
growing rapidly through the intercourse of each nation 
with others, an intercourse far freer, more multiplex, than i 
ever before in the history of the world ; a result largely of II 
the improved means of communication which we owe to * 
science and the spirit of inquiry. 

Perhaps the most striking illustration of the operation 
of this new factor is the rapid spread in recent years of 
parliamentary institutions. The parliamentary system 
of national organisation was worked out in these islands 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 411 

by long centuries of more or less blind conflict of ideas and 
parties and institutions; and now other nations in rapid 
succession have observed and admired the system and 
have deliberately and self-consciously adopted it; and 
still the process goes on, as recently in Russia. 

Japan offers a striking illustration of the way in which 
the new factor operates. An intelligent people in which 
the national sentiment was strong, but in which national 
self-knowledge was rudimentary because of the isolation 
of the nation, was suddenly brought into contact with 
other peoples; through observation of them, it learnt its 
own deficiencies and set about deliberately to remedy 
them in the light of its new knowledge ; and in doing so has 
reorganised itself from top to bottom. 

In England also national self-knowledge is beginning 
rapidly to increase in accuracy and extent. We have 
begun to compare ourselves at all points with other na- 
tions, and are no longer content with the good old creed, 
that everything British is best. We are learning in this 
way our weaknesses; and the knowledge is becoming a 
main cause of accelerated progress. The best illustration 
is, perhaps, the present stir over educational questions, 
which is directly due to the increase of national self- 
knowledge resulting from the observation of other nations. 

But in the future our national self-consciousness will be 
enriched and fitted for the guidance of the national will in 
a still more effective manner than by the knowledge of our 
weaknesses being forced upon us by the nations who are 
our rivals in the world. In many directions — by the 
historians, the biologists, the anthropologists, the statis- 
ticians — data are being gathered for a science of society 
whose sure indications will enable us deliberately to guide 
the further evolution of the nation towards the highest 
ideal of a nation that we can conceive. In this way, it 
may be hoped, the modern nations will be able to avoid 



412 Development of Nationsil Character 

that danger which has destroyed the great nations of the 
past, and which has been the dark cloud shadowing the 
brilHance of the age of progress that resulted from increas- 
ing human intercourse and mutual understanding. In 
this way the free play of the spirit of inquiry, which in all 
earlier ages has been highly dangerous to the stability of 
nations and which, while it was the sole cause of progress, 
nevertheless destroyed many of the nations whom it im- 
pelled upon that path, will make for a greatly accelerated 
progress ; and, at the same time, it will enable us to secure, 
by deliberate voluntary control, the bases of society, which 
in all previous ages have rested solely upon custom, in- 
stinct, and the religious sanctions. 

Not by any voluntary surrender of the reason, not by 
any subjugation of the intellect to the dominion of obscure 
transcendental ideas, such as is preached by Benjamin 
Kidd, Chatterton-Hill, ^ and others who have realised the 
disintegrating effects of intellect on earlier societies, but 
by a more strenuous use of our intellectual faculties, and 
by a growth of knowledge, especially a knowledge of the 
laws of human societies, will the stability and further 
evolution of nations be maintained. 

The nations whose progress will rest upon this basis 
will be in a position very different from that of the older 
societies to which the emancipation of the intellect was 
fatal. They fell for lack of knowledge of natural laws, 
as soon as the progress of intellectual inquiry had weak- 
ened their instinctive and customary bases. The modern 
nations may reasonably hope that they are within sight of 
knowledge which will enable them to avoid these dangers 
and to continue their progress during an indefinitely long 
period. They may even hope to progress, not only in 
respect of the intellectual and moral tradition, but also in 

^ Heredity and Selection in Sociology, London, 1907: an interesting work 
similar in tendency to Kidd's Social Evolution. 



Progress of Nations in their Maturity 413 

respect of racial qualities; for a better knowledge of the 
factors at work and of the laws of heredity will enable 
them to put an end to the influences now making for race 
deterioration and to replace them by others of the opposite 
tendency. 

Such national progress will be truly teleological ; it will 
be a progress whose direction will be determined by the 
desire of an ideal end present to the consciousness of all 
and striven after by the collective deliberation and voli- 
tion of the nation. 

Thus the group spirit, rising above the level of a narrow 
patriotism that regards with hostility all its rivals, recog- 
nising that only through the further development of the 
collective life of nations can man rise to higher levels than 
he has yet known, becomes the supreme agent of human 
progress. 



V 



INDEX 



Abdication of classes, 404 

Abstract psychology, 2 

^Esthetic faculty, 215 

Africa and lack of leaders, 187 

American homogeneity, 173 

Ammon, O., 345 

Analogy of national with individual 
mind, 201 

Ancestor worship, 251 

Ancient States, 391 

Angell, N., 185 

Anglo-Saxon origins, 326 

Animal societies, 47, 92 

Arab nation and Mahomet, 188 

Aristotle, 5, 263, 341 

Army, as organised group, 71; or- 
ganisation, 113 

Asiatics and authority, 158 

Athens depleted, 341 



B 



Bagehot, W., 276 

Balfour, A. J., on decadence, 201 

Baring, M., on Russians, 65 

Barker, E., 23, 24, 25 

Bateson, W., 359 

Bengal, 220 

Bentham, 6 

Binet, 46 

Birthrate, 347 

Blending of races, 330, 382 

Boer armies, 81 

BosANQUET, on general will, 212 

BouTMY, 296, 304, 313 

Brains, size of, 188 

Bruhl, L6vy, 103 

Buckle, 284, 298, 311, 349, 386, 

^387 

Bulgaria and war, 197 

Burke, Edmund, 249 

Butler, 7 



Caste, 251, 372, 395 

Celts, 322 

Chamberlain, H. S., 151, 335 

Chinese stability, 194 
Christianity, and morals, 368 ; and 

progress, 375 
Church, as a group, 128 
Civilisation, and natural selection, 

357; defined, 280 
Clans, 217 
Claqueurs, 42 

Classification of groups, 123 
Climate and race qualities, 294 
Collective consciousness, 45 et ^eg., 

99 

Collective mmd, 17 
Collective psychology, 29 
Collective will, 68, 74, 238 
Collier, Price, 356 
Communications, freedom of, 182 

COMTE, 6 

Concreteness in psychology, 3 

Conflict and progress, 405 

Conquest and progress, 378 

Contact of cultures, 388 

Contagion of emotion, 37 

Continuity, national, 199 

Cornford, 98 

Crowd, anger in Borneo, 37; emo- 
tions, 56; intelligence, 57; sug- 
gestibility, 58 

Crowds, 32 et seq. 

Crozier, Beattie, 265 



Darwin, 7 

De Lapouge, 330, 345, 346, 358 
Deliberative organisation, 257, 262 
Demolins, Ed., 311, 320 
Dickinson, G. L., 165 
Diflterentiation of races, 276, 286 
Dill, Sir S., 182 



415 



4i6 



Index 



Dissociation of personality, 46 
Driesch, H., 145 
Du Bois, 39 
DuRKHEiM, on race, 152 



Edict of Nantes, 346 

Egyptian culture and nature, 179 

Energy, and climate, 303 ; of races, 

373 
England and Germany contrasted, 

200 
Ephemeral groups, 122 
Equality, ideal of, 252 
EspiNAS, 47 
Eurasians, 119 

European progress, 393; races, 159 
Evolution of man, 288 



Factors of national development, 

283 
Family, as essential group, 115, 225 ; 

consciousness, 217 
Fear in India, 299 
Fechner, 47 
Feudal system, 399 
Fleure, J. H., 160 

FOUILL^E, 147, 149, 191, 222, 349 

French conquests, 252; sociability, 
306 

Fusions of civilisation, 379; by con- 
quest, 380 



Galton, F., 349, 399 
Gauls, 317 
General will, 74 
Genetic view in psychology, 6 
Genius and national life, 1 92 
Geography and progress, 388 
George, W. L., 244 
German idealism, 22 
German responsibility, 21 
German organisation, 210 
GroDiNGS, 7 

GOBINEAU, 151 

Gods, national, 143 
GoocH, 4 

Good of whole and of all, 236 
Greek people substituted, 338 
Green, T. H., 23 
Group action, types of, 79 
Group mind, conditions of, 67; 
defined, 12, 25 



Group psychology, the task of, 10 
Group spirit, 87 et seq., 413; its, 

merits, no 
GuizoT, 307 



H 



Hamilton, Sir I., on Japanese, 221 

Hartmann, von, 47, 144 

Hayti, 163 

Hebrew nation, 218 

Hegel, 23 

Heron, D., 353 

Hierarchy, of groups, 112; of senti- 
ments, 113 

Hill, Chatterton, 412 

Historians and psychology, 139 

HOBBES, 4 

Homogeneity, of group, 34; of na- 
tions, 169 

Hose, Ch., ioi 

House of Commons, 259 



I 



Idea of nation, 222, 237 
Ideals, national, 250 
Imaginative sympathy, 404 
Impulse, national, 263 
Independence, EngUsh, 308 
India, and China contrasted, 172, 

334; and Western culture, 164 
Individual, and group psychology, 8 ; 

and social interests, 20, 209 
Individualistic family, 325 
Induction of emotion, 36 
Infertility of peoples, 343 
Inge, Dean, 359 
Innate qualities, 153; and culture, 

156 
Inquiry, spirit of, 376, 412 
Intellect, disruptive effects of, 377 
Intense emotion of crowds, 35, 41 
Intercourse of peoples, 228 
International rivalry, 198, 228 
Irish qualities, 323 
Isolation of China, 226 



Jacks, L. P., 229 
jAcoBi, 354 
James, Wm,, 46 
Janet, P., 46 
Japanese patriotism, 221 



Index 



417 



Jesuit system of education, 116 
Justice, contractual, 394 



K 



Kroo, B., 284, 366; on Galton, 

368 
Kitchener, Lord, 90 



Leaders and national life, 186 

Leadership in armies, 84 

Le Bon, 27, 40, 188 

Le Play, school of, 317 

Liberty, and progress, 393 ; ideal of, 

252 
Limits of State, 257 
Locke, 4 

Locomotion, modes of, 183 
Lotze, 52 

Lowell, President, 257, 270 
Lynching, 67 



M 



Maciver, R. M., 13 et seq. 

Maine, Sir H., 7, 214, 371 

Maitland, 26 

Marie, 27 

Marx, K., 145 

Matteuzzi, 146 

Merz, Th., 3 

Mill, J. S., on race, 151 

Modem and primitive man, 167 

Mongrel races, 193, 332, 383 

Montesquieu, 146 

Moral tradition changing, 333 

Morality, traditional, 361 ; primitive, 

362 
MuiR, Ramsey, 135 
Munsterberg, on Americans, 173 
Murray, G., 244 
"My country, right or wrong," 239 



N 



Nation, definition of, 136 et seq. 
National action, types of, 234 
National genius, 192 
Nationalism, 131, 224 
Nationality a psychological problem, 

196 
Nationality, value of, 242 
Natural boundaries, 176 
Negro race and leaders, 1 87 
Negroes and American nation, 176 



Neighbour, who is our? 408 
Newland, Bingham, 42 
Newspapers in national life, 183 
Normans, 326 
North Sea outrage, 263 
Northmen, 326 



Olivier, Sir S., 335 

Organic and higher unity, 214 

Organisation, types of, 206; from 

above, 211; informal and formal, 

268 
Organism, contractual, 241 
Outcastes, 119 



Panic, 37 

Paradox of group life, 28 
Parliamentary traditions, 261 
Patriarchal system, 320 
Patriotism, 76, 225, 243 ; disparaged, 

248 
Pearson, C. H., 352 
Pearson, Karl, 354 
Pelasgians, 338 
Petrie, Flinders, 335, 356 
Philippines, Americans in, 164 
Philosophy of history, 147 
Physical environment and race 

qualities, 277, 293 
Plato, 24, 116 

Political philosophy, German, 209 
Populations, increase of, 343 
Practical interests and psychology, 

4 
Prestige, 90 
Prichard, H. H., 164 
Primitive Societies, 94 
Primitive sympathy, 37 
Prince, Morton, 14, 46 
Progress, ideal of, 254; of nations, 

374 . . 

Protestantism, distribution of, 160 
Public opinion, 264, 270 
Punans of Borneo, loi 



R 



Race qualities shape institutions, 
162; endurance of, 168; crossing, 

331 
Racial differences, 155 
Reid, Archdall, 345 
Relations of sciences, i 



4i8 



Index 



Religion and Reason, 355 
Religious excitement, 39 
Re NAN, 6 

Representative institutions, 270 
Responsibility, communal, 95; na- 
tional, 198 
Ripley, 160 
Ritual, 128 
Rivalry, national, 228 
Roman Church and ceHbacy, 348 
Roman civihzation, 389 
Rose, Holland, 196 
Rousseau, 5, 74, 212 
Russian armies, 82 



St. John, Sir S., 164 

Satisfactions of group life, 108 

Scandinavian conditions, 325 

Schaeffle, 50 

Seeck, O., 342, 390 

Selection by environment, 287; by 

towns, 346; reversed, 353; sexual, 

357; group, 362, 373 
Self-consciousness in crowds, 63 ; of 

nations, 216, 218, 409 
Sentiment, national, 224 
SiDis, 46 
Sighele, 27 
Smith, Adam, 6 
Social evolution, 291, 395 
Social organisation, 280, 290 
Social Psychology, 2, 4 
Sociology and psychology, 1 1 
Solidarity of human race, 254 
Spain depleted, 348 
Sparta depleted, 340, 341 
Spencer, H., 9 
State and nation, 240 
States, limits of size, 181 
Status to contract, 391 
Stoll, 64 
Subraces, 170 

Suggestibility and emotion, 58 
Superiority, intellectual, 360; of 



public opinion, 266; racial and 
cultural, 167 
Sympathetic action, national, 258 



Tancred de Hauteville, 327 
Telepathy, 41 
Tolerance, 402 
Tolstoi and anarchism, 208 
Tourville, H. de, 317, 320 
TowNSEND, Meredith, 302 
Tradition in political life, 261 
Tribal conflict, 335 
Tribal consciousness, 218 
Two-party system, 260 



U 



Unity of nation, 215 
Utilitarianism, 5 



Value of nationality, 242 
Variability of blended races, 1^3; 

and progress, 384 
Variation, spontaneous, 287 
Volney on colonists, 310 
Voluntary groups, 108 
Vue d' ensemble in psychology, 3 



W 



Wallace, A. R., on our ancestors, 

167 
War and national umty, 196 
Webb, Sidney, 353 
Welldon, Bishop, on sons of clergy, 

Whetham, 359 
Will of the people, 214 
WiNGFiELD, Stratford, 245 
Womb of peoples, 326 
World communications, 184 
Written Codes, influence of, 372 






Ethics and 
Natural Law 

By 
George Lansinci Raymond 



George L. Raymond, L.H.D., was 
formerly Professor of Esthetics at 
Princeton. In this book he appHes the 
principles unfolded in his esthetic books 
and bases morality upon harmony be- 
tween mental and bodily desire, with 
references to present social, economic, 
and political conditions. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

New York London 



/ 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



